The last Common Ground event of the semester ended with a Q&A session that left some students, staff and faculty shocked by one of the speaker’s remarks. In an April 15 event moderated by Michael Grygiel ’79, P’23 to discuss affirmative action, Annette Gordon-Reed and Heather Mac Donald debated the contentious topic of race-conscious admissions. Mac Donald, who spoke against affirmative action, was quickly accused of language that, for some, added “distasteful” discourse to Common Ground’s mission of “respectful” dialogue.
Gordon-Reed currently serves as a Professor at Harvard Law School and in 2009 received the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.
Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, the New York Times bestselling author of The War on Cops, and a contributing editor of City Journal. She also published the book When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
Visting Professor of History and Executive Director of Common Ground Ty Seidule began by thanking the participants and those who helped the evening come to fruition before handing the reins over to Grygiel. Grygiel provided a quick overview of the significant United States Supreme Court decisions that addressed affirmative action. Afterward, he asked Gordon-Reed and Mac Donald if the most recent court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that ended race-conscious admissions “got it wrong.”
In her response, Gordon-Reed emphasized the importance of history and how all history lives within us, even in the present. She used this logic to support the implementation of race-conscious admission strategies. Mac Donald similarly agreed to Gordon-Reed’s attention to history. However, she pushed back on affirmative action, citing the “mismatch theory.” The mismatch theory asserts that preferentially selected students will generally be unable to perform to the same standards as their peers. This topic in particular featured prominently in Mac Donald’s case against race-conscious admissions. However, as Gordon-Reed observed, both the methodology and evidence of this theory have been heavily scrutinized.
The dialogue continued, ranging from topics of sex to socio-economic status. Mac Donald claimed that higher education institutions are simply interested in boosting their diversity numbers when they implement race-conscious admissions, claiming they are not actually concerned with the economic background of their admits. She asserted that diversity of race does not always equate to diversity of experience—an argument frequently invoked by those who oppose affirmative action. Mac Donald continuously stressed how she believed college admissions should be decided purely by merit. In conjunction with this, Mac Donald additionally suggested that Americans must work to strip the public perception surrounding prestige in college matriculation.
Mac Donald maintained that affirmative action was a zero-sum policy, “A racial preference is always zero-sum for the person that’s preferred on the basis of race. That slot has been taken away from somebody who was not of the right race, who would have otherwise been qualified for it.”
She painted the picture of a “son of an Asian immigrant who’s been working in a deli in New York City, and his parents are working 12 hours a day, and he’s gone to Stuyvesant based on his mastery of academic skills,” continuing with, “he’s kept out of a place because it is always zero-sum…Why should he be forced to have much higher standards and accomplishments to get admitted than a Black son of a Wall Street lawyer. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Gordon-Reed countered by focusing on the need for these institutions to aid in forming a Black middle class. She spoke of how, at least anecdotally, affirmative action has had palpable results. While there has been progress, Gordon-Reed contended, race-conscious admissions have simply not existed for long enough to even come close to offsetting hundreds of years of oppression for many Black Americans. All the while, Gordon-Reed observed, white Americans have built up generational societal and economic capital.
At this point, the floor was opened for questions. Inquiries ranged from other potential policies that Mac Donald may be in support of instead of affirmative action to the legitimacy of legacy admissions.
When asked about non-zero-sum alternatives to supporting underprivileged students’ access to education, Mac Donald suggested “Boy Scouts” and changes to family structure. Mac Donald prefaced her response with, “I’m also going to say this very honestly. We’re all friends here, and I’m not going to pull my punches.”
“I think there has to be some changes in the family as well. All of us could benefit by imitating those Asian tiger moms. You know the parents have to be there demanding that the kids do their homework,” she said.
“Take the textbooks home. Don’t run the streets at night. Don’t join a gang. Don’t peddle drugs. There has to be asked and provided some personal responsibility as well for learning outcomes. It’s not just for policy. It also has to come from the home,” she concluded.
Grygiel closed the event after these remarks, but students were in no rush to leave the Chapel. Many surrounded the speakers and attending faculty, seemingly hoping to discuss the comments made during the debate.
Students and faculty had a diverse array of responses to the event. Sherman Lee ’27 stated that “Affirmative action is obviously a topical issue and is one that is very contentious. The conversation tonight brought forth perspectives from both sides of the debate. While we might disagree with each other, it is important to have civil discourse, to hear different opinions, and to engage with one another with respect.”
“What was otherwise an incredibly civil and informative discussion, thanks to both Ms. Mac Donald and Professor Gordon-Reed articulating legal complexities in a way the audience could understand, ended on a somewhat distasteful note. Digressing from the topic of race-conscious admissions, Ms. Mac Donald’s prescription that African-American mothers must do a better job at raising families was irrelevant at best,” said Muhammad Ahmad Rao ’26.
Sarafina Madden ’26, a representative of The Spectator and a Common Ground Student Ambassador, attended the post-event lunch. She recalled Seidule asking students in his discussion group if they had overstepped by inviting a speaker whose political ideology, he insinuated, was not just contradictory but racist. The students had the general consensus that it was important to hear from such a speaker because she is not unique for having these beliefs, she said. They continued by noting that there are lawmakers in our country who also possess these opinions and it is valuable to know how people in positions of power think, Madden reported.
Christina Spanier ’25 echoed this sentiment, “this event showed me the exact reason why we need Common Ground, not only at Hamilton, but in universities across the country. In a political climate like today, it is extremely valuable when we engage with it in person. Both of our speakers said their piece, yet they were forced to face the reactions of the audience simultaneously. This is a small step that we can take as people to bring humanity back into politics back into our government. Hateful words are said online daily— at common ground we heard them in person and can use this opportunity to learn how to respond.”
Professor of History Celeste Day Moore suggested foregrounding Gordon-Reed’s argument is the best response to insensitive comments. “After the event, a student reminded me of our previous discussion of Toni Morrison, who noted (and I am paraphrasing here) that racism’s primary function is to distract, and to force people to continue to explain and justify their history, being and value. That said, I was grateful to have listened to Annette Gordon-Reed, whose historical perspective is critical to understanding the effect of structural racism on higher education and admissions.”
This is not the first incident of a controversial speaker visiting Hamilton’s campus. Notably, “in January of ’67, George Lincoln Rockwell, president of the American Nazi Party, delivered a hate-filled address in a packed Chapel.,” L. Vincent Strully, Jr., Class of 1969 said in a 2019 address to the Hamilton community. He recalled that “At the suggestion of The Spectator, he was greeted in silence and students filed out in silence, although one student applauded in the balcony.”
Former Hamilton President David Wippman, who started the program, said Common Ground’s goal was to promote “respectful dialogue across political boundaries.” However, the initiative has faced criticism for the speakers it brings to campus.
President Donald Trump’s former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus came to Hamilton for a Common Ground event on April 11, 2019. Some students lauded the opportunity to hear from different perspectives, like William (Will) Ling ’22 who wrote an opinion piece for The Spectator titled “Protesting certain political speakers undermines the notion of ‘common ground.’” He encouraged students to empathize with the positions of their peers and saw protests against Common Ground speakers as detrimental to the program’s goals.
Others saw potential harm with inviting controversial speakers to campus. Associate Professor of Africana Studies Nigel Westmaas has with Common Ground. In a Sept. 10, 2017 Spectator Letter to the Editor, Professor Westmass claimed “the principle and intent behind the planned series of talks might be well-intentioned…too much is at stake for an elusive search for a fanciful, polite, common ground.”
In an email to The Spectator for a 2022 report, Westmaas shared “there is the potential issue of ‘false equivalence’ that creeps into the common ground topics and/or conversations. So for example, in order to find a ‘parallel’ point or ‘common ground’ that suits ‘both sides’ we might equate ‘both sides’ with the level of ‘complicity’ on an issue far removed from the facts on the ground.”
In a radio interview the day after Tuesday’s Common Ground event, Tepper continued to speak on Hamilton’s commitment to inviting diverse opinions on campus. In response to a question about Obama’s declaration that higher-ed institutions should use their endowments to resist political pressure, Tepper spoke of Hamilton’s core higher-ed principles. He told WIBX, “We have such diverse, pluralistic communities. It’s not easy to bring people from every imaginable background together and say: trust each other, talk in class, take risks with one another, talk across differences…we have to curate that the right way.”
Hamilton has a long history of divisive political discourse, and students have continuously expressed differing opinions on its value. Common Ground, as a symbol of Hamilton’s approach to civic engagement, will continue to grapple with these questions.