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Oxford University is undertaking affirmative action, and meeting with resistance. The London Times headlines: “Oxford accused of lowering standards to meet diversity target.”

The university intends to admit ten percent of its incoming class on the basis of an “Opportunity Oxford” program that favors applicants from postal codes that are deemed disadvantaged. It is not clear to what extent postal codes are being used as a proxy for race, or whether poor white students are being favored under the program.

Opportunity Oxford is being criticized for diluting the university’s commitment to academic excellence:

A don involved in admissions said: “The part about being admitted ‘on the same rigorous basis as all other students’ strongly implies that academic standards are not being compromised by this scheme, which is simply false.

“I have known students admitted under this scheme who could not write essays in grammatical English, something previously unknown in my experience among Oxford undergraduates.”
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The guidance for admissions tutors acknowledges that the favoured treatment for applicants considered “disadvantaged” means other students who perform better academically will not obtain a place.

“The university is not increasing its undergraduate intake so it would be expected that ‘OppOx’ places would displace other candidates,” it states.

We have been through all of this before in the U.S. The Times story quotes a the leader of a “right-wing pressure group”:

“Equivalent policies in the US have polarised and divided society. The Supreme Court has recently had to place limits on such action.”

That is true, of course. The “right winger” refers to the Supreme Court’s decision in the North Carolina and Harvard race discrimination cases. Many have been skeptical as to whether universities would actually obey the law as laid out in those cases (or rather, as laid out in the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act), or instead would evade and obfuscate as is their wont.

It appears that Harvard Law School, at least, is actually following the law. One shouldn’t be surprised, since it is after all a law school, but still: Black Student Enrollment At Harvard Law Drops By More Than Half.

The number of Black students entering Harvard Law School dropped sharply this fall after last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, according to enrollment data released on Monday.

Harvard Law enrolled 19 first-year Black students, or 3.4 percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s, according to the data from the American Bar Association. Last year, the law school’s first-year class had 43 Black students, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
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The law school also saw a steep decline in Hispanic students, to 39 students, or 6.9 percent, this fall, from 63 students, or 11 percent of the total, in 2023. Enrollment of white and Asian students increased. …

This doesn’t mean, of course, that blacks aren’t attending law school. Overall, black enrollment in law schools rose by 3 percent.

When I attended Harvard Law School, affirmative action was just beginning. As I recall, the practice at that time was to admit blacks in exactly the same proportion as their share of the population, then around 15 percent. No one pretended that anything like equal standards were applied to those students, and over time I believe that rigid quota gave way to softer forms of discrimination.

But now it seems that the law school, after all these years, is finally complying with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Better late than never.