Shark Blog has announced the advent of the Crayon Diversity Award. Oliver Willis is the first recipient of this ignoble honor for his comments about the lack of diversity at last week's San Francisco Blog Bash. Competition for such an award is bound to be fierce. But I'd like to nominate the leaders of the 35 national higher education associations who signed this letter to President Bush urging him to support the University of Michigan in its attempt to convince the Supreme Court that racial preferences are Constitutional. (For a fine fisking of the letter, see John Rosenberg's eloquent and forceful explanation of why the letter and the logic it represents are reprehensible.)

UPDATE: Stefan concurs: the second Crayon Diversity Award goes to the 35 righteous leaders of higher ed. Stefan awards "a box of 64 crayons, to be split 35 ways. I recommend cutting each crayon into 35 pieces, so that every institution can get a piece of every color."