College Fix student journalist Andrew Johnson recently reported on the strange new policy at Brown University that will allow students there to “self-identify” as whatever ethnicity they choose. On Monday, Johnson joined Dan Rea on WBZ NewsRadio 1030 to discuss the policy and the nature of identity politics.
“No one from the university is really willing to talk about it,” Johnson told Rea. “Whether it’s going to be applied to influence who gets admitted, or how they’ll get admitted, doesn’t seem to be on [Brown officials’] minds.”
Rea concurred, noting that Brown University refused to speak with the radio station. “For some reason, they don’t like to speak on the phone with people,” Rea said.
Rea pointed out that the question of “identity” has become a fraught one in recent years, and that given recent social movements surrounding gender and other “identities,” people “can say whatever they think they are, not necessarily what in fact they are.”
Johnson agreed. “I asked several officials at the graduate admissions office and the associate dean for diversity and inclusion whether there was going to be any institution to check whether what someone said is true, and nobody got back to me on that either,” he told Rea.
Johnson also said that no Brown official would speak to him on the phone about the matter.
Listen to Johnson’s interview with Rea here, and read Johnson’s reporting on Brown’s new policy here.
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Add to the Discussion