ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Universities Need To Come Clean About The Real Meaning Of ‘Meritocracy’

Among the demands being made by the Trump administration against Harvard is that it reject Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and accept meritocratic admission and hiring criteria.

Most Americans believe inmeritocracyas described by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a day when all people are judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Meritocracy, though, has several possible meanings. It can mean a current performance evaluation, without regard to the past or future. Pilots, surgeons, athletes, stock pickers, and others in similar positions are generally judged by their current ability to do the job best.

We do not really care whether our surgeon commendably overcame hardships to become a good surgeon. If there is a “better” surgeon — with a higher rate of success and a lower rate of failures — who overcame no hardships, a rational patient would select him or her.

So would a rational airplane owner choosing a pilot, a rational investor selecting a stock picker, a rational orchestra leader deciding on a first violinist, or a rational coach drafting a fast-ball pitcher.

Perhaps, in an extreme case, a decision-maker might bypass the empirically best candidate because that candidate was so morally compromised that the decision maker is willing to sacrifice the best outcome on the altar of a higher morality. That is a choice only some would make about some outcomes.

The second definition of merit takes a longer view. It looks at each candidate’s likely trajectory. How far into the future one looks depends on the task at hand. Selecting applicants for university admissions requires a prediction of success over a relatively short period of time. For faculty members, pilots, or orchestra members, a bit longer. Yet these judgements are also primarily empirical, not moral.

The third definition is largely moral. It requires an assessment of deservingness that goes back to the past. The candidate is judged not only based on his or her current or future performance level, but also on the distance traveled and the barriers overcome.