Missouri Treasurer: Reps. Cleaver and Bush are wrong. Say no to race-based admissions | Opinion

Should universities discriminate by race? The obvious answer is no, and over the summer, the U.S. Supreme Court applied that answer to higher education nationwide. Missouri’s universities have now put an end to discriminatory and divisive race-based admissions. As Missouri’s first person of color to hold statewide office,. I’m glad to see this backward practice disappear. Yet I’m deeply concerned that two of Missouri’s members of Congress are calling on Mizzou to bring back racial discrimination.

Reps. Emanuel Cleaver and Cori Bush made this demand earlier this month. They want Mizzou to use what they think is a loophole in the Supreme Court’s ruling. Instead of directly looking at applicants’ race, they want Mizzou to look at how race affects an applicant’s life — a distinction without a difference. They also want Mizzou to continue offering scholarships that are only available to members of specific races. Their transparent goal is to keep discriminating against applicants based on skin color, unfairly benefiting some at the expense of others.

In reality, this demand is deeply insulting to people of color, including me. Reps. Cleaver and Bush are effectively saying that people of color aren’t good enough to succeed on their own merits. Of course we are. We’re just as capable as anyone else. That’s why universities should focus solely on an applicant’s scholastic aptitude and work ethic.

Mizzou should adopt a 100% merit-based admissions policy — no race quotas. At the same time, it should end the race-based scholarships that Reps. Cleaver and Bush want to expand. They may think this discrimination is justified, but the federal government disagrees. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a formal investigation into discrimination at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. Specifically, it targeted ten MU-funded scholarships that are explicitly restricted to applicants of specific races. Other schools that have faced such investigations have ultimately abandoned their discriminatory scholarships, and rightly so.

The sooner this discrimination ends, the better. But it’s even more important to root out the politicized culture that encourages such discrimination. Most universities have been corrupted by woke ideology, which explicitly demands dividing people by race and giving priority and preferential treatment to some races over others. That worldview has no place guiding an institution of higher education. It’s an insult to the taxpayers who fund universities as well as the students who attend them.

Mizzou is moving in the right direction. The University of Missouri System President Mun Choi recently eliminated the use of so-called “diversity statements” in its hiring practices. These statements, a frequent demand of woke activists, force faculty and staff to demonstrate their belief in their divisive and discriminatory ideology. It’s a political litmus test that stifles academic freedom and ensures that students will only be presented with a woke worldview. That’s the last thing a university should do. Like students, faculty and staff should be hired based on merit and professional achievement, not their political beliefs. I commend Dr. Choi for his insistence on achievement and potential, not politics, guiding admissions.

Every college and university in Missouri should follow Mizzou’s lead, whether public or private. And no institution of higher education should try to bring back racial discrimination in admissions, including through race-based scholarships. Activists and their political allies — including some of our own members of Congress — may want that, but they’re wrong. Fairness and equality should never be replaced by division and discrimination, at Mizzou or anywhere else.

Vivek Malek is the Treasurer of Missouri.