To be clear, @JHS , this is a thought-experiment about whether Chicago would have rescinded, not whether it should now accept, Kashuv. Nor am I at all concerned about whether Harvard’s rescission will hurt Kashuv. What happened does invite thinking about the policy and mission of a great university. There can be different opinions about this, and different universities have different conceptions of mission. That is what we’re talking about here.
The piece you cited simply took it as a given that the University of Chicago was a place of “low-hanging racism”. I know nothing about the black experience, but l do know when I am reading tendentious ideologically blinkered writing, no matter the race of the writer. The piece did nothing to convince me that the experience of ordinary black students would be much affected by the acceptance of a fellow like Kashuv, especially in light of the many hundreds of their fellow-students who would join them in condemnation of him if he perpetrated any similar eruptions while on campus (or probably even if he didn’t).
I agree that it wouldn’t be the best p.r. for Chicago, but it sounds like this editor has already made up his mind about the University in any event. P.R. isn’t everything. My own fond hope is that there are students of color who would want to come to the University precisely because of the same values that attracted me. I don’t for a moment believe that such students would encounter anything approaching the racism the writer of the piece suggests, nor would I conclude that the University would be putting this action “on the backs of minority students.”