As expected, Democrats and the left threw a temper tantrum last week when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action for use in college admissions. President Joe Biden blasted the Court for its decision and, during his comments, also spoke of “privilege” in education. He announced that he would be directing the Department of Education to “analyze what practices help build a [sic] more inclusive and diverse student bodies, and what practices hold that back, practices like legacy admissions that expand privilege instead of opportunity.” Biden also rightly stated, “Today, for too many schools, the only people who benefit from the system are the wealthy and the well-connected. The odds have been stacked against working people for much too long.” That statement turns out to be an epic example of “ok for me but not for thee” and a stark reminder that the Bidens are champions at that game.
It also turns out that, while Joe Biden was rambling on about “privilege” in education, he engaged in plenty of it himself. Once again, it was Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop that gave up more Biden family hypocrisy and secrets. In 2018, among Hunter Biden’s many activities, he asked “Pop” and a number of other family members to see if they could be of some assistance in getting his daughter Maisy into the University of Pennsylvania. Maisy was not the best of students but had her sights set on UPenn. Two days after she applied, Maisy asked Hunter about the status of her application, never mind the fact that thousands of others had also applied. But those thousands of others didn’t have a grandfather who, at the time, was the former Vice President of the United States. Joe and Hunter Biden wasted no time and went directly to UPenn President Amy Gutmann. It was also convenient that Gutmann is a Democrat, and her husband had donated to Democrat campaigns. She was also the one who hired Joe Biden to teach at UPenn.
Joe Biden and Amy Gutmann met in December of 2018. Joe texted Hunter telling him that he “had a great talk with Guttman [sic].” But it seems as if, at that point, Gutmann had not caved to the Bidens’ demands and that Maisy’s grades were still an issue. Joe then texted Hunter saying, “Maisy still in the game for regular acceptance. But must do well in class this period. It’s real. We should talk about tutors etc starting tomorrow.” Hunter suggested that Maisy show some interest in extracurricular activities, perhaps playing on the LaCrosse team.
But when you are as adept at currying favor as the Bidens, you don’t leave anything to chance. It was then that Joe Biden contacted the Dean of Admissions at UPenn to inquire about his granddaughter’s application. It is unclear what transpired in that conversation, but Joe Biden was told that Gutmann would call him herself with the final word on Maisy’s application. Whether Maisy Biden decided to buckle down her senior year and bring her grades up or her acceptance was due to her last name being Biden is also unclear. What is clear is that Joe Biden was among other proud parents and grandparents in the audience four years later as Maisy graduated from UPenn with a bachelor of arts degree. Whatever the case, if you are good to the Bidens, they are good to you. In July of 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Amy Gutmann as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Unless, of course, you are Hunter’s daughter Navy Roberts, who, through no fault of her own, will never have the benefit of her father’s and grandfather’s influence or even their last name.
Legacy admissions play a large role in most of America’s Ivy League universities. In 2022, then-senior student Logan Roberts, a white first-generation Yale student, started and led an organization of other students like him. He drafted a resolution in October of 2022 opposing legacy preferences that was adopted by the Yale College Council Senate. Roberts said of the resolution, “Students who already have a leg up don’t need another leg up.”
Most of America’s potential college students don’t have the phone number of the president of the university they would like to attend handy. And even if they did, they also don’t have an easily recognizable last name like Biden. This practice is coming under scrutiny in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, but will the well-connected be smart enough, and well-connected enough to just take it underground and out of the public eye?
Joe Biden and the Democrats may want to put an end to legacy college admissions, but like everything else, they don’t oppose it for themselves. They only oppose it for you.