I think Obama's more recent statements on affirmative action are much more relevant than the HLR's policy 18 years ago. Individual's views on such matters can change afterall.

He's still for it, no?

I believe so. I believe he also favors preferences for disadvantaged whites. Not sure if that means he would oppose preferences for minorities who are not economically disadvantaged.

Obama indicated at one point on the campaign trail that his daughters, who are lucky enough to be very privileged and well off, ought not to benefit from affirmative action but suggested (plausibly in my view) that the economically disadvantaged of any race ought to be given some kind of consideration or boost. Obviously he has in general steered clear of discussing this issue because, as with abortion rights, expressing any strong view yields few benefits in an election year.

Obama a poster child for affirmative action? How can one example prove the worthiness of a policy that might be applied to millions of people repeatedly throuughout their lives? More science, please.

Given Obama's hints at a preference for class-based rather than race-based affirmative action, the color of his skin, and his party affiliation, I think that there's some decent chance that he will actually pull a "Nixon going to China" and reform affirmative action policies at the federal level. Yes, this is mainly wishful thinking.

On the other hand, given the same factors listed above, I think that it is realistic to believe that he's unlikely to do anything that expands or further racializes affirmative action. Similarly, it's even more unlikely that McCain would have anything like the political capital to do anything to reel it in.

To "Bama 1L": Obama's letter does not say that an affirmative action policy was used for women and then abandoned. It says that the editors debated extending the policy to women, but chose not to. HLR has never had affirmative action for women, so far as I know.

Though the description on the website is opaque, the Review does not now have affirmative action for women. The selection committee does not even have gender information when it is making decisions about the discretionary spots (i.e., the spots that can be used for affirmative action if necessary). It does have information about race and physical disability, and can take both into account.

Does it occur to anyone to ask why he chose to be black?

AA goodies, and just as important, much less competition. This is one smart cookie.

If he had chosen white, do you suppose he would be the next president of the United States? Not the faintest chance.

Sorry for the threadjack, but I don't know if any of the front page guys (Eugene, et. al.) have the stomach to do a piece about it.

Then the simple solution is to get your own blog and not threadshit on a site merely because you would prefer it cover something catering more closely to your political preferences.

If he did so well, it means he could have done just as well without AA.
Shame he didn't try it.

When I was a brain-dead leftist, I was still brain-alive enough to despise affirmative action (while agreeing with most other leftist ideas). I was sure that most white leftists supported affirmative action only because they were afraid to be called racists if they came out against it; I was sure that the first major black Presidential candidate with any experience in elective office would be against it. That person, I thought, could say how we all feel about government racism (i.e., affirmative action) without being called the R-word.

I was wrong. Obama could come out against AA if he didn't love it - no one would bat an eyelid. (He came out in favor of the Patriot Act renew, and no one gave a darn, or even remembered.) Leftists are either dumb or immoral; let's home some of the dumb one wise up like I did.

Gee, Thales, I thought Obama was the candidate to transcend race.

Obama's own writings trace his journey from a man raised by the folks who provided 50% of his genetic material (who happen to be white Kansans) to a man who embraced a certain strand of African American cultural experience as an adult. It's all about his choosing.

It is you, Thales, who feels constrained to judge a book by its cover and THAT is ugly and foolhardy.

While I despise laws mandating any form of race or status based preferences and rejoice at the wholesale elimination of them, I would not mind a partial measure in the form of a law eliminating such preferences for any class of persons from which a President has been elected.

Leftists are either dumb or immoral

I always suspected, but never had proof till now. You say they are for Affirmative Action? Well, that proves it! Dumb AND immoral! No other reason they could be for that policy!

And that does DOUBLE For the Supreme Court! I seem to recall they put it in their opinion in the Michigan Cases: "We Are Dumb and Immoral Hur Hur."

Remember Marx's "Das Afirmitivaction!" He was all about racial politics!

Hawkins and Thales. There are none so blind as those who will not see. To folks like this America is irremediably racist, and Heaven forbid it changes, because that would
erase H and T's sense of moral superiority.

I don't care about it one way or another, but I maintain, and shamelessly if you like, that Mr. Obama has exploited his assumed race in every possible way.

No moral superiority here. I actually oppose affirmative action. That doesnt mean I couldnt see the stupidity of your comment.

Obama's own writings trace his journey from a man raised by the folks who provided 50% of his genetic material (who happen to be white Kansans) to a man who embraced a certain strand of African American cultural experience as an adult. It's all about his choosing.

The interesting bit is that if we want to see which part of Obama's ancestry contributed to his success, we only have to look to his half brother in Kenya. It's pretty fair to say that Obama's opportunities and successes came because of his white mother's family.

The interesting bit is that if we want to see which part of Obama's ancestry contributed to his success, we only have to look to his half brother in Kenya. It's pretty fair to say that Obama's opportunities and successes came because of his white mother's family.

Really? Did anyone in his mother's family attend graduate school at Harvard?

LN.
No. But they were Americans. It's a pretty big deal if you're not.

Reading the entire piece, I'm rather surprised at the emphasis he places on ideological and viewpoint diversity, which have become buzzwords on the Right. It's also interesting that he endorses an "other things being equal" policy, rather than a policy that attaches greater weight to being a racial minority or having a disability. So a member of a racial minority who had lower grades or a lesser writing sample would not be qualified; rather, out of a pool of equivalently qualified candidates, he argues that it is acceptable to turn to other factors that would enhance diversity, on the premise that such diversity enhances the quality of the review. He clearly believes that ideological diversity is an enhancement of this kind, which again is now the premise accepted by many on the Right.

Obviously Americans in general tend to have considerably higher standards of living than Kenyans. My point was that Obama's father, despite not being an American citizen, was able to attend graduate school at Harvard.

NASA's complete failure to beat private enterprise into SPACE.

Affirmative action using racial preferences makes zero sense to me. The biggest losers in such a scheme are underclass Asians, who don't have the educational nor financial background of the more successful immigrant Asian families, yet have to compete with them instead of other minorities are similarly situated.

Why should Obama's daughters have such a huge advantage (something like 300 SAT points) over your average Hmong? This isn't even "reverse" racism, it's a new form of institutional racism.

q, I agree with you, and luckily, so does Obama.

HLR, Thanks for clearing that up. As you can see, I was misled by "[W]e decided . . . an affirmative action program for women was unnecessary." It would be interesting to see overall statistics on law review editorial boards.

I'm also not sure what Professor Bernstein's larger point was. Surely Harvard Law School--a private institution--can decide whom to admit and why. If it wants a class that "looks like America," it can create one--the Supreme Court has held that even a public law school can do this. Surely Harvard Law Review--a voluntary club within that private institution--can also set its own standards to achieve diversity. (Indeed, wouldn't the "libertarian" position here favor freedom of association?)

The government is held to different standards. That Obama benefited from diversity initiatives in education doesn't provide any data about how he might feel about redress initiatives in government programs, for example. See, e.g., Clarence Thomas.

My point was that Obama's father, despite not being an American citizen, was able to attend graduate school at Harvard.

Yet George Obama despite having the same father as Barack Obama, lives on less than a dollar a day and hopes to become a mechanic.

Same father, different mothers. Very different outcomes.

q:

If we went by merit alone such as SAT/GPA scores Whites would be even a lesser minority at several major California universities. See Lowell High School (San Francisco).

Asian Pacific Americans are still the largest ethnic group in the freshman population at the University of California at Berkeley, according to new semester statistics released by the school, reports the Chinese-language World Journal. According to the school, among the 4275 admitted freshman students, 41.6 percent are Asian Pacific Americans, slightly lower than last year's 42.9 percent. The Asian Pacific American student population includes Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Pacific Islanders and Vietnamese students but does not include Filipino students. Among them Chinese-American students make up the largest portion of the Asian Pacific American student population with 23.5 percent. The university's freshman class also includes 29.7 percent white, 11.7 percent Latino, 3.9 percent Filipino, 3.1 percent African American and 0.5 percent American Indian.

World Journal, Posted: Aug 27, 2007

CB55, I don't see how that undermines my point at all. Asians as a whole are penalized the most from AA precisely because of the numbers you gave. It may be justified to do this for many Asians whose parents are educated and relatively affluent, yet there are likewise many Asians who are not. Nor is it as simple as saying Asians having a culture that emphasizes education. It's silly and ignorant to think Asian culture is homogenized.

If the goal of AA is to be more egalitarian in opportunities,* race is a terrible proxy for this. The biggest beneficiaries of AA are middle-class blacks. The biggest losers are lower-class Asians.

* I know the purported goal of AA is "diversity," but given its dubious utility, I think such a justification is poor and unconvincing. And anyway, moving to "class-based" preferences would still create a lot of diversity.

Uh_Clem,
On your threadjack.... Are you aware that Ohio government officials were trolling government databases for dirt on "Joe the Plumber" at the request of their reporter friends?

Moreover, when the media decides that it is verbotten to ask a question which embarrasses The One and decries Palin's drawing attention to such facts as "hate speech," and when 'liberals' are often in favor of eliminating first amendment protection for "hate speech," it is perfectly reasonable to link the media tantrums against Palin with future undermining of the First Amendment.

A current example: you will get arrested for hanging an effigy of Obama, but you get pats on the back for your cleverness in hanging an effigy of Palin. Local officials are more influenced by the media than the Constitution.

Former Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein Endorses Obama

Former Reagan adviser endorses Obama

Growing up in a developing nation rather than one of the richest, freest, and most prosperous nations in the world is a great way to limit your options.

I agree. Growing up in America helps a lot. But he still needed to learn to go after the opportunity. Don't compare George and Barack with each other. Compare them within their respective nations. Barack near the top, George wants to become a mechanic. I'm pretty sure that mechanics are not the top of the social/economic ladder in Kenya.

The real story here is that during the campaign Obama has said, on more than one occasion, that he didn't know whether he benefited from AA during school. He even went so far as to claim that he left the race section of his law school application blank (I don't believe him).

Apparently the HLR Barry Obama was not quite so uncertain about his relationship to affirmative action.

@Guest12345

Obama self-identifying as black is a bit mysterious. He could easily have choosen to be an American of mixed heritage and adopted the main cultural elements of America. He didn't. That's kind of interesting.

"the main cultural elements of America" -- and those would be?

Uh, Clem, at least Sarah Palin can spell "amendment," which you've shown in multiple posts that you can not.

If your intelligence equaled Governor Palin's, I'm sure you could spell equally well.


[OK, that was snarky. But I enjoyed it immensely.]

Arkady,
You can criticize Constatin, but he does illustrate perfectly one of the fundamental flaws with affirmative action: it robs legitimately successfully blacks of any public recognition of their abilities. All successful blacks are now saddled with the presumption, by practically everyone on the left and right, that they would not have gotten where they were without affirmative action. The "soft bigotry of low expectations," as it were.

q:

Every social scientists knows that there are more ways to measure human intelligence and achievement than the GPA/SAT, and it is for that reason that schools wish to include diversity in its population. Thus the UC system is not an all Asian club nor is Yale a school only for the rich with money to buy the best education.

AA should not be only a legal question but a moral/ethical one. I outline in my post here AA is a very common practice yet few on the right split hairs about the practice when it is not a question about Blacks.

Affirmative action has become a national watchword, stirring aspirations and resentments, accompanied by appeals to principle from both its defenders and opponents. In fact, no one can say for sure how many of the
shifts within the workforce should be imputed to these programs. As has been noted, hiring black secretaries and telephone operators did not result from race-based preferences, but from the movement of whites away from
those jobs. On the other hand, more black accountants may have been hired simply because more of them now have the credentials for professional positions.

Affirmative action has clearly contributed to the growth of a black middle class, but what is often over looked is the wage/income gap between Blacks and Whites with out regard to education and experience.

In 1993, the most recent breakdown available at this time, black managers were paid at a ratio of $868 for every $1,000 made by whites. That, too, is an advance over 1970, when the ratio was $672 per $1,000. However, the most
striking racial gaps appear at levels carrying more responsibilities and higher pay Among the white managers, 31.1 percent earned over $50,000, and 6 percent exceeded $100,000. However, only 13.5 percent of their black
colleagues made more than $50,000, and a scant 2.2 percent earned over $100,000. Most of the black man-agers were considerably below the salary median, suggesting that they were several steps down the chain of command.

While we cannot say precisely to what degree the growth of a black middle class has been due to affirmative action, we do know that the policy’s adoption by government agencies has played an important role. If we look at Americans earning $40,000 or more a year, a decent middle-class income, less than 20 percent of the whites are on public payrolls. So the white middle class is largely a private-sector creation. However, over forty percent of blacks who earn more than $40,000 are employed by government,
and the proportion grows to more than half if we add quasipublic positions in health and education and social agencies. This should not be surprising since, as has been noted, these are the areas where affirmative action has
been most energetic. In fact, were it not for this commitment, there would not be much of a black middle class. (This also helps to explain why black
managers make less than white managers: fewer black managers are in private business, where $50,000 and $100,000 paychecks are more common.)

Of course, business is where the big rewards are. A realistic measure of black promotions comes from the Executive Leadership Council, which says it
limits its membership to the "nation’s most senior African-American corporate executives." Its 133 members come from 104 corporations, a ratio that itself tells us that most of the 104 firms have a single black manager in a senior position. Only 5 of the 104 corporations—Sears, Xerox. Mobil, Kraft, and Merrill Lynch—can point to three or more black persons at that level. Currently, hardly a handful of black corporate executives head operating divisions. More commonly they hold positions in charge of "community relations," "corporate diversity," and "market development," the last usually referring to promoting products among black customers. Only about 4-5 Black CEOs reached the corner office from the thousands of companies with sales of at least one billion dollars.

The Forbes annual roster of the four hundred wealthiest Americans has cited more than a thousand different men and women since it began in 1982. Of this number, five—less than one-half of 1 percent— have been black. Two of
the earliest were Berry Gordy of Motown Records and John Harold Johnson of Ebony and Jet magazines. A later addition was the late Reginald Lewis of Beatrice Foods, who was esti-mated to be worth $400 million at the time of
his death in 1993. The 1996 listing contained Oprah Gail Winfrey, whose holdings were put at $415 million; William Henry Cosby Jr. was on the 1995 roster with $335 million.

Constantin- most grading in law school is anonymous... professors couldn't have given him any help even if they wanted too.

Also, I assume everyone here that is opposed to affirmative action is equally opposed to legacies.

LN:

This game of assigning credit for Obama's successes to his various ancestries is ridiculously silly.

I agree wholeheartedly. The credit goes entirely to Affirmative Action policies, which allow race to trump merit.

Arkady:

BTW, Constatin, you're not ever going to grant the man's accomplishments, are you? Not ever.

I can't speak for others, but for myself, I will not grant the man's accomplishments if anyone claims they are based on merit; that he succeded fair and square. Because Obama obviously failed on merit, and he only succeeded when given a leg up over more deserving individuals.

Before the libs here get their panties in a bunch, consider this: John McCain graduated [IIRC] fifth from the bottom of his class. So Obama would not have had to achieve even average grades in order to have bragging rights over his opponent.

Obama has been called upon to release his high school transcripts, his SAT, and his LSAT scores. But he has adamantly refused to disclose any of them, insisting on keeping that information hidden from the voting public.

If Obama had earned good grades in high school, and/or scored high on the LSAT and SAT tests, that information would have been printed above the fold in the NY Times and just about every other newspaper in the country.

Inescapable conclusion: Obama got poor grades in high school, and used Affirmative Action to bypass the thousands of Asian, caucasian, Indian, Filipino, Jewish and other students with 4.25 GPA's and stellar SAT scores.

I don't blame Obama for hiding the fact that he's an empty suit who got where he has through AA rather than merit. Anyone with bad grades wants to hide the fact. But if I'm wrong about your HE-RO, simply prove it: convince Obama to disclose his grades and test scores.

Of course, he won't. Why would he want to show the world his poor academic results?

There's a common-sense solution to this continuing Affirmative Action travesty:

"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.''

-- CJ Roberts

Isn't it about time?

I'll cut 0bama all the slack anyone desires... when he shows us the outstanding grades and test scores that got him into Harvard [and the same goes for legacy admissions in general].

Obama is like Norman Y. Mineta, who was an unaccomplished do-nothing who used his Japanese ancestry, and nothing else, to leverage himself over much more deserving individuals.

See, 'in some quarters,' people want to see equal opportunity based on merit, rather than equality of results based on racism.

Legacy admissions are not the same as affirmative action. Only a very small proportion of whites can benefit from a legacy connection while all members of a discriminated race benefit from affirmative action.

Blue:

I think the late George Wallace would say there is not a dime worth a difference between legacy admissions and affirmative action when the results are the same.

Adam J.,

"Also, I assume everyone here that is opposed to affirmative action is equally opposed to legacies."

Other than development officers and the parents of legacies, who isn't?

Constantin:
How exactly would Obama know whether his race was taken into account by those who judged his academic qualifications? With respect to the law review selection process, at least, he points out that all of the records are destroyed. Given this situation, his statements are merely an honest acknowledgement that this could have happened--after all, he has no way of knowing. It also expresses some degree of humility for the person selected as the editor in chief to state this publicly.

Anon252:
I don't think I am misreading the statement; I think that you are. What is your evidence that the remaining candidates, for whom race and disability considerations could be brought in, had a "large difference in scores"? They're already selecting candidates from the cream of the crop, and it can be difficult to make crisp qualitative differentiations at that level. Is it Harvard's practice to include students with mediocre grades or writing samples on the law review, as your interpretation implies? I doubt it. So we're dealing with a group that is already meritorious, and I doubt that the qualitative differences between them are great. For this group, Obama argues for taking into account other factors. Whether that's right or wrong, it's completely different from, say, the AA policies that grant significant extra weight by making a minority candidate's LSAT score equivalent to a higher score for anyone else.

In short, the obvious emphasis of Obama's statement was that the differences between the candidates were not significant, so it makes sense for me to interpret that as meaning "equivalent" qualifications. If you want to interpret that as "large differences in scores", the burden of proof is clearly on you.

It should also be emphasized that Latinos will soon be a majority in California, in fact 50% of K-12 students in that state are Latino. Will AA be so readily supported when it is used by the majority to discriminate against minorities?

sbron:

Whites birth rates are not only lower but Whites are having fewer babies while Hispanics are having More babies at a higher rate. Hispanics as a demographics are Younger than the White population.

cb:

Affirmative Action is a social norm as red, white and blue. Our schools and employers have set asides and quotas for military vets, alums of certain schools, the disabled, for those that are of a certain surname, religion, gender, or places of origin, and for those on the A list for music, sports and cheer leading, and if you are related to the old money social network of schools such as Yale or Harvard you are in like Bush.

You forget to mention Admiral Action, which most likely played an important role in McCain's career. This is what McCain's biographer said about McCain's big promotion into the only executive position he ever held:

The assignment was controversial, some calling it favoritism, a sop to the famous son of a famous father and grandfather, since he had not first commanded a squadron, the usual career path.

(From "John McCain, An American Odyssey," p. 123. The author is a Naval Academy graduate, Marine, and Vietnam vet.) For some strange reason, McCain doesn't even mention that job in his official campaign bio.

It's also reasonable to suppose that McCain's very famous name helped him get into and through the Naval Academy.

McCain has crashed planes in circumstances that seem to reflect poor judgment or impulsiveness. And then apparently made false statements about it. His famous name probably helped him deal with these events, too. It seems unlikely that someone else with that record would have been promoted.

guy:

What is the, or is there, end-game for affirmative action for blacks? We’re going to have a black president, the past two secretary of states, a supreme court justice, head of Time Warner, block buster male and female movies stars, etc.

It's true that blacks can now be found in lots of places where they didn't used to be. But it's still hard to find them in the GOP. The RNC was 98.5% white. See here:

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the [RNC] convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern -- a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years.

jwg:

a reasonably well to do white mother

Can you show some facts behind that statement?

Perhaps some insight from people actually there might shed some light on the original question and subsequent conjecture? From a Frontline special
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
choice2008/obama/harvard.html

Bradford Berenson Harvard Law, class of '91; associate White House counsel, 2001-'03


The law school generally at that time was riven ideologically, and not just in terms of Republican/Democrat partisan politics, but there were contending schools of legal thought at the time, represented on the faculty, that really polarized both the faculty and the student body. There was a far-left group of professors who adhered to what was known as critical legal studies, and then there were a handful of conservative professors, like Charles Fried, who had served in the Reagan administration. There were intense debates over affirmative action and race issues. This is, after all, just a few years after the end of the Reagan presidency. ...

That doesn't mean that, day to day, people weren't friendly to one another, but the classroom was very politicized. The debates and discussions of the law and of cases frequently pit conservatives in our class against liberals in our class, and the discussions often got quite heated. I would say the environment at Harvard Law School back then was political in a borderline unhealthy way. It was quite intense.

... Interestingly, race was at the forefront of the agenda. There were intense debates over affirmative action that sometimes got expressed through fights over tenure decisions relating to junior faculty at the law school. There were women professors and minority professors who either had come up for tenure or were coming up for tenure, and there were big fights, on the faculty and in the law school at large, over whether they should receive tenure, whether the quality of their scholarship merited that. ...

[A]fter [Obama] became president of the Review, he was under a lot of pressure to participate and lend his voice to those debates. And he did, I think, to some degree. But I would not have described him as a campus radical or a campus political leader. He was the president of the Harvard Law Review, the leader of that organization. But, in that role, his job was to manage, in essence, a publication, and the editors who brought it forth and to do a lot of close editing of academic legal articles. …

You don't become president of the Harvard Law Review, no matter how political, or how liberal the place is, by virtue of affirmative action, or by virtue of not being at the very top of your class in terms of legal ability. Barack was at the very top of his class in terms of legal ability. He had a first-class legal mind and, in my view, was selected to be president of the Review entirely on his merits.

... I never regarded him as kind of a racial special pleader, or a person looking for race-based benefits, either for himself or others. I think as a policy matter, he supported affirmative action and believed in the arguments for it. But unlike many people on the left, he was also willing to acknowledge that it had costs, and he could at least appreciate the arguments on the other side. ...

Just in a political sense, what kind of a person were you looking for [to serve as president]? ...

The block of conservatives on the Law Review my year I think was eager to avoid having any of the most political people on the left govern the Review. I mean, the first bedrock criterion, I think for almost all of the editors, was to have somebody with an absolutely first-rate legal mind who would be able to engage competently with the nation's top legal scholars on their scholarship and on these articles, and who would provide the intellectual leadership for the Review that it always needed. That was non-negotiable for almost everybody right or left.

But there were a number of people that would have met that criterion. There were at least a large handful who probably had the intellectual and personal characteristics to be good leaders of the Review. From among those, the conservatives were eager to have somebody who would treat them fairly, who would listen to what they had to say, who would not abuse the powers of the office to favor his ideological soul mates and punish those who had different views. Somebody who would basically play it straight, I think was really what we were looking for.

Was that hard to find?

It was very hard to find. And ultimately, the conservatives on the Review supported Barack as president in the final rounds of balloting because he fit that bill far better than the other people who were running. ...

We had all worked with him over the course of a year. And we had all spent countless hours in the presence of Barack, as well as others of our colleagues who were running, in Gannett House [the Law Review offices], and so you get a pretty good sense of people over the course of a year of late nights working on the Review. You know who the rabble-rousers are. You know who the people are who are blinded by their politics. And you know who the people are who, despite their politics, can reach across and be friendly to and make friends with folks who have different views. And Barack very much fell into the latter category. ...

[After Obama is selected,] he does a very able job as president. Puts out what I think was a very good volume of the Review. Does a great job managing the difficult and complicated interpersonal dynamics on the Review. And manages somehow, in an extremely fractious group, to keep everybody almost happy.

Some of the people who are not as happy as others, I think much to their surprise, are some of the African American people who believe that now it's their turn.

Absolutely right, absolutely right. I think Barack took 10 times as much grief from those on the left on the Review as from those of us on the right. And the reason was, I think there was an expectation among those editors on the left that he would affirmatively use the modest powers of his position to advance the cause, whatever that was. They thought, you know, finally there's an African American president of the Harvard Law Review; it's our turn, and he should aggressively use this position, and his authority and his bully pulpit to advance the political or philosophical causes that we all believe in.

And Barack was reluctant to do that. It's not that he was out of sympathy with their views, but his first and foremost goal, it always seemed to me, was to put out a first-rate publication. And he was not going to let politics or ideology get in the way of doing that. ...

He had some discretion as president to exercise an element of choice for certain of the positions on the masthead; it wasn't wide discretion, but he had some. And I think a lot of the minority editors on the Review expected him to use that discretion to the maximum extent possible to empower them. To put them in leadership positions, to burnish their resumes, and to give them a chance to help him and help guide the Review. He didn't do that. He declined to exercise that discretion to disrupt the results of votes or of tests that were taken by various people to assess their fitness for leadership positions.

He was unwilling to undermine, based on the way I viewed it, meritocratic outcomes or democratic outcomes in order to advance a racial agenda. That earned him a lot of recrimination and criticism from some on the left, particularly some of the minority editors of the Review. ...

It confirmed the hope that I and others had had at the time of the election that he would basically be an honest broker, that he would not let ideology or politics blind him to the enduring institutional interests of the Review. It told me that he valued the success of his own presidency of the Review above scoring political points of currying favor with his political supporters.

I don't think I am misreading the statement; I think that you are. What is your evidence that the remaining candidates, for whom race and disability considerations could be brought in, had a "large difference in scores"? They're already selecting candidates from the cream of the crop, and it can be difficult to make crisp qualitative differentiations at that level. Is it Harvard's practice to include students with mediocre grades or writing samples on the law review, as your interpretation implies?

Here's one data point: Of the top LSAT scorers in the country, defined as the LSATS one normally needs to get into a top 20 school, only 1% are African American. Even making the dubious assumption that this holds true even at the tippy top of the range, only 1% of Harvard Law students would be African American under normal admissions criteria. One would expect that, all things being more or less equal, that 1% of Harvard Law Review editors would be African American if chosen solely on normal credentials. Given that a lot more than 1% are African American, we can surmise that it's very unlikely that the difference in scores between affirmative action and non-affirmative action members of the HLR is marginal, at least when it comes to race. But if you don't believe me, why don't you email the HLR and ask them to provide the scores for aa and non-aa members of the Law Review since aa was instituted. I'm sure if everyone was just about equally qualified, they'd have no problem releasing this data. (Fat chance!)

Most large US corporations have long had affirmative action policies rather similar to what's described in Mr. Obama's 1990 letter. Not surprisingly, their CEOs routinely have long explained and defended those programs in terms very much like to his. What does that imply about all those CEOs?

For that matter, my own firm has long had a similar policy, and I've explained it to staff and recruits in similar terms. What does that imply about my partners and me?

The answer is that it makes Mr. Obama and those CEOs and us all part of mainstream America.

Taking positive steps to bring minorities into our institutions has been part of our society's mainstream for decades. Even if some people on this blog don't approve.

Anon, first of all, LSATs are not the only criteria for admission, and even LSAC advises that they not be used as such. Second, I don't quite know how you're judging who has what scores, when people who choose not to declare a racial category have received the highest average LSAT scores for several years now. Third, even if we grant that your data is the only thing that matters to admission and is accurate, there's a basic fallacy involved in transferring these results from the largest group, the test takers, down to all students at one school, and then further down to one group of @42 selected for law review. Even so, how many more black students than "should be expected" do you think are on the law review? Any above zero?

Anyway, for the sake of argument I'll grant all the above to your side and agree that we should expect less than half of one person on the review to be black. Even so, the review accepts 14 people purely on the basis of grades plus writing sample, and another 20 on the writing sample. Now we're down to 8 people left, who were already highly qualified with no "significant" differences on the other grounds. Race and disability might be taken into account at this point, but that doesn't mean that all the candidates accepted at this stage will be black. Even if you disagree with using race as a consideration--and I sympathize with that view, by the way--I can't see that it would have the kind of effect here that you suggested earlier (i.e. race allowing less qualified applicants to be chosen above others). This sounds much more like an "other things being equal" system, rather than a preferential treatment system of AA, and I do think it's interesting that Obama argues for the former, but I've never seen him argue for the latter.

To clarify my final point, which was based on MY knowing what I mean:

There are many changes that research universities could institute in order to allow more female junior faculty to get tenure. Things like 'unpunished' maternity leave, during which the tenure-clock is paused. But they don't.

My institution's motto: We will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get more senior women faculty! Except change things.

Hoosier,

This has been a theme on these boards when Obama's academic background comes up. How DARE anyone suggest that he was at Columbia and Harvard for any reason other than personal merit?!! That smacks of RACISM!!!

This may be the strawiest straw man I've seen you grapple with. Of course it's as fair and accurate to link Obama with Affirmative Action as it is Bush and McCain with family influence. But while I don't doubt some outliers may have complained like you say -- after all it's the Internet; somebody's got to make every argument in its most extreme form -- most of the controversy has been over whether you can infer anything at all extraordinary from Obama's HLS record. And as I assume you know, the instigating claim on those threads is typically that you can't, since everything Obama accomplished gets waved off as Affirmative Action. And that claim is both demonstrably false and at least arguably racist.

In 1990, The New York Times itself, when Obama became head of the Harvard Review, stated explicitly that selections for the position are based on AA principles.

http://tinyurl.com/5qgonc

Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon."

That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.

Note the last sentence in particular.

As for him being an example of the success of AA due to his successes since then... um, WHAT successes? He's gotten where he is primarily by kicking everyone else off the ballot for technicalities (including former political allies), getting opponent's private records released to the press, and the affirmative action preferences of Democrat primary voters. He hasn't actually -accomplished- anything on his own except helping to create the biggest voter fraud machine in the country's history.

Qwinn

given his successes ever since, Obama would more likely be the poster child in favor of affirmative action.

Soooo....racist quotas are good as long as the results make you happy? Good to know.

LM:

I'm Irish, L. We don't construct "straw men." We construct wicker men. Then we fill them with people who displease us, and we burn them. So don't get on my bad side.

On the more mundane level: Not a straw man at all. I can't see how one denies that Obama supporters have been quick to cry "racism!" whenever they think it will deflect criticism from their guy.

DW,

Yeah, but I'm a New Yorker. Any side we get on is your bad side.*

Hoosier,

I can't see how one denies that Obama supporters have been quick to cry "racism!" whenever they think it will deflect criticism from their guy.

Adding a red herring to that straw man tells me you've never tried to get the smell of fish out of wicker. Yes of course there are Obama supporters with a ready complaint of racism for any occasion. But you said the complaints were a "theme" when anyone had the temerity to suggest affirmative action played a role in Obama being at Columbia or Harvard. Say it ain't so, Ho(osier).

For one thing, it's no secret Obama acknowledged probably benefiting from AA, and it's not new information. Only somebody who didn't know that could even think there's a pretext for objecting to that kind of AA remark. Now I may have missed an "Obama's academic career" thread here or there, but I followed most of them, and except for the odd troll or other outlier, AA's likely involvement in Obama getting to HLS is pretty uncontroversial. Most of the fights have been over how much intelligence can be inferred from, and how much credit Obama deserves for his academic achievements. And when the not infrequent answers have been "little" or "none" is when accusations of racism get leveled. I don't assume any of those accusations are necessarily correct, but neither would I dismiss them out of hand.


[*I'm also from California. Why are you so negative?]

DM,

WHOOOSH...... (the sound of your point going over my head). I'm guessing "liege" makes me the Pope, not the German guy (the names escape me, though not having thought about them for twenty years probably makes it more accurate to say they served their sentence and I set them free). But snowcones? I do prefer them to hair shirts, but I'm guessing there's an actual reference here I'm supposed to recognize. Literary? Python? The Wit and Wisdom of Manny Ramirez?