<p>akdaddy, I think Caltech people are happy to let the MIT folks have their affirmative action policy, as just about all posts on this thread have indicated. Caltech has made a conscious decision to favor merit at the expense of racial/gender diversity and MIT has made a conscious decision to favor racial/gender diversity at the expense of merit.</p>
<p>It’s not “unfair” to point out that the policies are, in fact, different, and have different results though–which is all the poster who got you so worked up originally did.</p>
<p>Further, I do reject the assertion that it’s “unfair” to criticize any policy so long as said policy is “truly believed in.” Such criticism should be (and in the case of the Caltech folks on this thread, in my opinion, has been) done in a civil way, but for goodness sake–the medievals “truly believed” that the sun went 'round the Earth, and “truly believed” that Galileo ought to be condemned to hell for saying otherwise! Sincerity of belief is no metric for either the correctness or the morality of a given concept.</p>