I personally think that anything but basing it on merit is wrong due to X factors:
1. If you reject someone based on race, no matter which, it is racism
2. Those that got in due to quotas, even if they are the most qualified are gonna be having doubts about if they only got in through the quota and are in reality not good enough.
3. There is a stark difference in the percentage of male/female/black/white/etc that go into different fields. Basing it on the wider population would not even be close to approaching a representative percentage. Also: local differences, which basically makes the whole attempting to represent the percentage of the population moot.
As an example: There are barely any women working in sewers, should they have quotas for getting about 50% of the sewer workers to be female?
In short: Quotas are bad for everyone, are especially hurting those they claim to help and are completely misguided anyways.
I wasn't here to make a value judgement on either option because I know how polarizing the topic is and there's very little room to objectively argue any side before you're drowned by the other.
My main point focused on something that I find more important: will we end up in a situation where both views are considered equally legitimate even if they are conflicting?
I took your comment as a chance to share my thoughts on it.
> will we end up in a situation where both views are considered equally legitimate even if they are conflicting?
I personally can't see the standpoints being equally legitimate due to my above problems with it. But for the general population? I think that both can be legitimate in their eyes.
> I personally can't see the standpoints being equally legitimate
I took your point. I was thinking of legitimate as in official decisions. There are already laws that implement gender or racial quotas in a work environment. Many companies already advertise this [0] and even public institutions were discussing it at least as far back as a decade ago [1]. One would logically have to assume that they're equally valid for a university. If the issue is indeed that Yale is using such quotas to maintain a certain balance between the different groups based on the population ratios but the courts agree with the Feds that this is illegal then we'll be left holding 2 equally (il)legitimate but contradictory views on the problem: quotas are legal, positive measures to achieve balanced participation and representation [2] but at the same time they are illegal because they discriminate against the other groups.
Since the details of the Yale case aren't all that clear right now we'll have to wait for the judgement. They may actually do something more onerous than that I assumed above.
1. If you reject someone based on race, no matter which, it is racism 2. Those that got in due to quotas, even if they are the most qualified are gonna be having doubts about if they only got in through the quota and are in reality not good enough. 3. There is a stark difference in the percentage of male/female/black/white/etc that go into different fields. Basing it on the wider population would not even be close to approaching a representative percentage. Also: local differences, which basically makes the whole attempting to represent the percentage of the population moot.
As an example: There are barely any women working in sewers, should they have quotas for getting about 50% of the sewer workers to be female?
In short: Quotas are bad for everyone, are especially hurting those they claim to help and are completely misguided anyways.