TJ alum calls admissions changes ‘a war on excellence’ in Washington Post

My colleagues and I have written many times about our Thomas Jefferson High School admissions case, but nothing we could write better captures what’s at stake in the case than what Coalition for TJ member Hung Cao just wrote in The Washington Post.

Cao is a TJ alum. A Vietnamese refugee who later became a Navy Special Operations officer, Cao belonged to the very first graduating class of the high school. His class of 337 kids was “a nerdy hodgepodge of teenagers” from different backgrounds. TJ, he writes, “was where we learned to take ownership of our future.”

But now, with its admissions changes that discriminate against Asian Americans like Cao, TJ has launched a “war on excellence,” Cao writes, calling the changes “discrimination disguised as equality.”

“What I see is an activist culture replacing competition and excellence with entitlement and it is eroding the foundation of who we are as a country,” he writes.

I urge you to read Cao’s full op-ed at The Washington Post.