With UMKC Chancellor Leo Morton‘s apology for the inflated rankings of the university’s Bloch Business School, the Kansas City Star succeeded in its goal of embarrassing the university…
Although no one questions that the data submitted to the Princeton Review were fudged, some question why the Star saw fit to invest its dwindling resources in exposing this mini-scandal and wonder whether there wasn’t a racist subtext to the reporting.
Indeed, on review, the original Star article on this subject seems to have been written to provoke anti-Chinese sentiment. The reader learns, for instance, “of a previously undisclosed relationship between the university and the study’s Chinese authors.”
The gratuitous use of the word “Chinese” here serves no obvious purpose but to invoke stereotypes of stealth and craftiness. Continue reading