SFFA v West Point: Review of Lyall Declaration

In the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v West Point case, West Point relies heavily on a declaration [ link ] by Professor Jason Lyall of Dartmouth on the benefits of diversity to the Army. This is a critical piece of evidence which attempts to directly link battlefield lethality to the Army’s diversity programs. If it manages to directly and causally link diversity to lethality and battlefield efficacy, it could represent a “distinct interest” of West Point for deploying its unconstitutional, racially discriminatory practices.

We have examined the Lyall declaration and offer our observations below. The focus of this assessment is whether and how the Prof Lyall’s statements supports the West Point case, and not a criticism of Prof Lyall’s scholarship, which, if you read his CV at the end of the declaration, is quite extensive.

In short: we find that the declaration does not support West Point’s case because it reasons by inaccurate analogy, uses irrelevant metrics and studies, and is internally inconsistent.

Major Arguments

Here are Prof Lyall’s major arguments, presented in excerpts from the Declaration:

First, the evidence from quantitative data and historical case studies demonstrates that a diverse and inclusive military is critical for battlefield success. Diverse and inclusive militaries are typically more cohesive and lethal than their more exclusionary and discriminatory counterparts.

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Second point:

“Second, inequality within the military itself (“military inequality”) along ethnic and racial lines is detrimental to the core missions of the military, including lethality, force protection, and resilience under fire. Military inequality is defined as the degree to which a military draws on ethnic groups that are subject to state-based discrimination or repression; the higher the percentage, and the worse the treatment of these groups, the higher the military inequality.”

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To make a connection to the SFFA case, we see that the declaration is implying that dropping race-based admissions practices is tantamount to “state-based discrimination or repression.” It also poses a conundrum: If the effect of repression gets worse as the percentage of the groups increases, what does it say about a state that is artificially increasing the representation of the groups in the military?

These points are supported by Prof. Lyall’s work with Project Mars data, discussed in detail in the book “Divided Armies: Inequality and Battlefield Performance in Modern War.”

The third point is:

Third, the Plaintiff’s complaint contains both factual errors and mistaken historical judgements. I briefly focus on four issues: (1) the US military, far from being “colorblind,” has a long, tortured, history of racial and ethnic tension and contestation within its ranks; (2) soldier identities are not rendered moot by combat conditions but indeed often shape the likelihood of survival on the battlefield; (3) the Plaintiff overlooks the role of officers as culture carriers and their role of providing the framework for inclusive, representative, leadership that maximizes the advantages of diversity; and (4) the complaint exaggerates the importance of social cohesion as a determinant of military effectiveness.

We will not address the factual inaccuracy point about the original complaint; it seems a matter of degree and a consequence of the “the more you learn, the more there is to know” aspect of history undermining broad statements. So there may be truth in there. But we will put to the side as it is in any case not the bulk of the declaration. The historical judgment point is also highly subjective. We will stick with more tangible points.

Qualitative Argument

Prof. Lyall proffers the following Benefits of Diversity:

Instead, I argue that battlefield performance is dictated by how armies manage the diversity within their ranks”

This is a novel argument insofar as it does ignore culture (a la Victor Davis Hanson), technology, and economic and industrial wherewithal. But let’s go deeper.

What is the link between diversity and battlefield performance in modern war?

Research has demonstrated that diversity confers at least four possible advantages — a “diversity
bonus”¹¹— on modern battlefields. First, diverse teams typically outperform homogenous groups in problem-solving and decision-making, particularly for tasks with high complexity.¹² Second, cognitive heterogeneity helps diverse teams innovate faster by introducing a wider array of ideas, debate, and communication styles.¹³ Third, teams with diverse perspectives and lived experiences may prove more resilient and adaptive in the face of unexpected challenges and uncertain environments.¹⁴ Finally, representation through diversity may enhance the military’s legitimacy at home by illustrating how its values and behaviors are consistent with those of broader society.¹⁵ By contrast, militaries that become divorced from society may generate civil-military friction and societal apathy (or, worse, outright hostility) that hampers recruitment, retention, and, ultimately, combat power itself.

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This section is perhaps the most important in the entire paper because it describes the mechanism by which diversity may contribute to combat effectiveness. It tries to link diversity and military efficacy. We think it is important here to pay attention to a representative few of the citations that Prof Lyall uses to make this case.

In footnote 11, the source is: “The Diversity Bonus”. We have not read the book, so rely upon excerpts gleaned from the internet. [ Link ] The author means cognitive diversity: “Three: by diversity, I will mean cognitive diversity, differences in how we interpret, reason, and solve…” and links that to identity through some assumptions on what brings cognitive diversity to the table: “We need to make reasoned judgments about what type of diversity might be germane to the task at hand. Education, life experiences, and identity—for example, race, gender, age, physical capabilities, and sexual orientation—can all contribute“.

“Can contribute.” The author did not mean to take marginal performers just because they had a certain skin color, but for their cognitive contributions. USMA seems to have gotten confused on this point.

In footnote 12, there are four sources:

1. Almaatouq: [ link] Task complexity moderates group synergy
   • Summary: Regarding task complexity: Groups solve complex tasks more efficiently than individuals, and individuals solve simpler tasks more efficiently than groups.
   • Our Commentary: It is unclear how this is supposed to support admitting lower-performers because of skin color.
2. Bouncken: [Link] Multi-cultural teams as sources for creativity and innovation: The role of cultural diversity on team performance
   • Summary: “Results indicate that cross-cultural teams have a high potential of creativity, but are confronted with difficulties arising from different working- and communication styles which have to be proactively managed from the beginning. While progressing, teams learn to cope with this diversity related to some more surface-level cultural dimensions and members even align. Yet, diversity of power distance induces conflicts that deeply impact the innovation process.”
   • Our Commentary: This is supposed to make us more confident in bringing diverse teams together? It sounds like there are distinct communication and working style issues to overcome. And it certainly says nothing about going out of order of merit or capability in building teams.
3. Li: Not Found; We could not find the 3rd source on web searches. Feel free to point us to a link!
4. Hong & Page: [ Link ] “Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers”
   • Excerpts: “We introduce a general framework for modeling functionally diverse problem-solving agents. In this framework, problem-solving agents possess representations of problems and algorithms that they use to locate solutions… This result relies on the intuition that, as the initial pool of problem solvers becomes large, the best-performing agents necessarily become similar in the space of problem solvers. Their relatively greater ability is more than offset by their lack of problem-solving diversity… This paper focuses exclusively on functional diversity: differences in how people encode problems and attempt to solve them. The claim that perspectives and heuristics may be influenced by race, geography, gender, or age has much to recommend it, as does the claim that perspectives and tools are shaped by experiences, training, and preferences. However, even when applying our result to those cases when identity diversity has been shown to correlate with functional diversity, we need to be acutely aware that identity-diverse groups often have more conflict, more problems with communication, and less mutual respect and trust among members… The current model ignores several important features, including communication and learning. But, as we see in the proof of the result, as the pool of problem solvers grows larger, the very best problem solvers must become similar. In the limit, the highest-ability problem solvers cannot be diverse….
   • Our Commentary: There is an optimal point where having more approaches to a problem does better than having one high powered approach to a problem, but it is an optimal point, not an absolute rule. Further, we note that this was a mathematical computational modeling exercise, not tested on people. Prescribing policy based on simplified models of problem-solving is a dangerous and technocratic approach to complex issues.

We see a trend here. The sources have a particular finding that indicates that multiple approaches to solving problems, by applying better algorithms or more bandwidth or both, tends to solve problems better. We agree. We note that the studies approach diversity as problem-solving or cognitive or functional diversity. They definitely do not say to expect better results by letting lower performers into a group based on their race. The received wisdom that “diversity offers benefits” comes with many caveats.

West Point makes the unwarranted logical leap from that functional diversity to racial diversity. Apparently West Point sees skin color as a direct proxy of diversity of thought and problem-solving (though the latter is much harder to measure and report on). Along the way, it not only ignores constitutional rights but also the downsides of diversity mentioned in the same studies. And in any case the studies do not justify discriminating to let lower performers into West Point.

Finally, for the point that representation through diversity builds legitimacy with the people of society, we agree that we don’t need a military caste. This is hardly novel. But it also requires many assumptions from there to land at the conclusion that it is critical, contra the Constitution, for West Point to goose its minority (specifically Black) cadet representation through discriminatory admissions.

Quantitative Argument

The charts, formulae, and data in the declaration certainly put a veneer of quantitative and analytical rigor on the declaration’s arguments. Let’s see whether they actually support the case.

First, we love to see quantitative historical analysis of battlefield performance! There is far too little of this sort of thing going around. In an era where deference to military leaders’ un-falsifiable utterances is the norm, data should have a larger role to play. The charts are nice.

And in fact we completely agree with the hypothesis and data support!

We believe, however, and to steal the phrase from one of our favorite statisticans, that “The problem here is one of sophism rather than error.” The idea is completely correct, but also completely mis-applied. And it cannot be applied the way that West Point/Lyall positions it without fatal logical errors which can only be reconciled through severe ideological biases.

Here is the base formula for inequality scoring:

What does this mean? Put in natural language, the better an army is treated, the fewer problems it has. The worse it is treated, the more problems it has. “Better” and “Worse” are contingent on subjective assessments of “inequality,” which in Lyall’s examples are manifested by such things as being shot by commanders for retreating, actively antagonizing particular groups, and so on. If a large part of an army is treated poorly, then we can expect worse outcomes than if a small part is treated less poorly, and so on.

When we think of it like that, hardly any other outcome would be possible. It almost rises to the level of truism. Any graduate of PL100 would agree that treating more troops worse leads to worse morale and outcomes.

Professor Lyall’s twist is segmenting the examined armies by ethnic groups. His research includes assigning each ethnic group in an army a trinary repression-score, and then quantifying how much of how poor treatment results in what degree of poor outcomes.

This is helpful information to any general trying to figure out how much desertion he can expect with each incremental degree of oppression he applies. (Looking at you, SFAS cadre who removed the mattresses from the bunks!) The findings don’t address what would have happened to the Russian commanders had they not shot their retreating troops, but we digress…

We examine the Table 1 below: looks convincing!

And here are the supporting charts – pretty clear!

These charts are fascinating. The only thing really missing is a win/loss correlation chart. We think there is something to them, even if Prof Lyall does not (and we confess to not having read his book in the short time that we’ve been assessing this – it is available on amazon.com here) conduct a factor analysis to see if there were higher-level root causes of the issues above.

Let’s see what happens when we apply this scoring method to West Point’s situation.

Inconsistent Logic Applied

With all this, we return to the key assumption in Professor Lyall’s declaration that stopping racial discrimination against Whites and Asians, in favor of admitting Blacks, equals inequality towards Blacks. While we disagree with that from first principles, we can easily turn it around using Prof. Lyall’s own logic and the fact that the preferences are a zero-sum game. That is, if one group receives a benefit, another is necessarily deprived of that benefit.

In this case, if Black candidates are receiving a Plus, then White and Asian candidates are receiving a Minus. There are limited class slots. Every slot filled by a candidate is a slot that a different candidate didn’t get.

White cadets are about 60% of Corps at West Point, Black cadets about 13%, Hispanic about 12%, and Asian about 8%. Exact numbers may vary class to class, but this will do. (yes it doesn’t total to 100% as it excludes native pacific islanders, “other”s)

So with Professor Lyall’s formula, we find that the equal oppression score is applied to the White students plus the Asian students, who are now receiving a Minus in admissions because of their race.

The USMA Inequality score is much higher when there are preferences for Blacks than without! This means that the Corps of Cadets is on the verge of deserting, defection, and losing in battle! Quick, let’s change the White and Asian inequality scores to .5 to represent just some inequality:

Well, that didn’t help a lot. The best course of action is still to have no preferences.

Even if we accept that lack of preferences equals “Inequality” (and we don’t), the scoring becomes much worse when West Point discriminates against Whites and Asians. So why does the declaration take the position it does?

For the logic to work in the declaration’s favor, there must be an implicit assumption: That Whites cannot be oppressed (i.e. be on the receiving end of inequality, treated as second class citizens, or subject to political oppression). That is, there can be no “1” in the (W)hite or (A)sian columns. That there can be no racist behavior against Whites, or that racist behavior against Whites somehow means less than a possible under-proportionate-representation of Blacks in the Corps of Cadets. This is the only way the logic works. And that, by the way, is a core tenet of oppressor / oppressed, leftist class-warfare ideology.

Professor Lyall did not explicitly make this claim in his declaration, but it is foundational to the conclusions that he reaches and the side he is declaring for.

(Parenthetically, this particular attitude of the Diversity ideologues towards White soldiers is now pervasive in the military, and — right in line with Prof Lyall’s predictions – we note that there are terrible recruiting trends for the military, which is majority White.)

Last, we note that Prof. Lyall does not prescribe the optimal mix of race or inequality ratios to achieve optimal efficacy (We didn’t have access to the full research to learn exactly what triggered inequality ratings, unfortunately). His methods could very easily result in recommending reducing minority group representation in order to lower the inequality number of West Point or of the Army. Instead he seems to advocate for more diversity, for one group at the expense of another. Unfortunately this will raise the inequality score even more!

West Point has very specific targets for its race mix. So there is a big disconnect where West Point points to a quantitative study to justify its policies, and yet that study produces no applicable method for determining targets for the West Point policy.

Reasoning by Analogy

Heinlein aptly wrote “Analogy is always suspect”, and here it is.

The SFFA response and memo for the injunction notes that Prof Lyall is using comparisons to things that the US Army is not. He invokes the experiences of military forces from other countries and times, and indeed UN Peacekeepers to draw conclusions about the US Army’s approach to diversity. This is supposed to imply that West Point is entitled to take particular actions in its admissions processes.

The United States and US Army have a unique history, current composition, and current mission. Applying the experiences of UN Peacekeepers in balkanized states to prescribe policy for the US Army is misguided. Extending it further to suggest that West Point has a distinct interest in allowing admissions preferences is a real stretch.

For example: If the cases that Prof Lyall cites are real drivers for diversity admissions programs, why is West Point the vehicle for that set of Army accessions requirements? Why is the Army not doing it in other ways, more directly, and more closely linked to the operational requirements at hand? How will the Army know what Diversity is required to gain the benefits described, and why do the preferences seem to go only one way?

Conclusion

The Prof Lyall declaration is fascinating. It represents the strongest evidence that West Point has presented to underpin its “distinct interest” of improving military efficacy in the case.

But it fails to make that specific case in multiple ways. It relies on non-applicable or even contradictory studies for benefits of Diversity. Its quantitative methodology actually supports the opposite side’s conclusion, unless radical leftist ideology is applied. It points to other military adventures and asks for deference in supposing that those examples are relevant to USMA admissions.

Last, it fails to consider alternatives. Where is the study of the impact of g or other measures of merit on the battlefield? What is the minimum “diversity” required to achieve battlefield efficacy with the Corps of Cadets? What are the opportunity costs, immediate and long-term/strategic, that the Academy is incurring with its current practices? It cannot address these questions. And without them, it cannot support its own argument.

Factual corrections and thoughtful criticism are welcome,