How I Learned to Love Quotas-New York Times reason, the law school seeks a"critical mass"of minority students that, although not formally a quota, has remained remarkably consistent from year to year and leads to the admission of black and Hispanic student with significantly lower test scores than those of their white and Asian counterparts Conservative scholars have countered with competing studies sug gesting that racial diversity on campus may aggravate racial tensions rather than alleviate them. And in my own experience, the benefits of diversity outside the classroom are hard to prove. Whenever I raise the q uestion in class, a few candid students volunteer that they rarely socialize with students of other races. In light of all these doubts about the nonacademic benefits of diversity in higher education, I had long believed that universities should try to achieve as much intellectual diversity as possible, and let the racial chips fall where they may i wish i could say there were a single, dramatic moment of revelation that turned me from an affirmative action skeptic into a supporter. But the truth is that my conversion took place over several years, in the late 1990s. After the courts and popular initiatives began to ban affirmative action, I noticed that state legislatures and universities rebelled, deciding on their own that racial diversity is more important than meritocracy. In both California and Texas, the political pressures to achieve racial diversity proved so overwhelming that when each state's universities were forbidden to take race into account in the admissions process, they simply refused to accept the decline in black and Hispanic enrollment that inevitably followed. Instead, universities responded to the widespread political demand for diversity by devising plans that, in effect, lowered academic standards across the board. This response has had some success in keeping up minority enrollments, but at the cost of an even more serious compromise of academic standards than the relatively modest concession represented by affirmative action itself. In other words, I became convinced that selective universities can't achieve colorblindness, diversity and high admission standards at the same time. They can achieve only two out of the three goals. For the most part, schools would prefer to choose standards and diversity, using racial preferences to create a diverse class while keeping standards relatively high. But if the courts order colorblindness, America's finest public and private universities won't hesitate for a moment in choosing diversity as the second goal, allowing rigorous admissions standards to go out the window. This is a prospect that both the Bush administration and some of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court seem ready to em brace. " If Michigan really cares enough about that racial imbalance, why doesn't it.. lower the standards, not have a flagship elite law school? asked Justice Antonin Scalia at the oral argument. "It solves the problem I first encountered the argument that eventually persuaded me to change my mind about affirmative action in a Supreme Court brief filed by three University of Texas law professors in 1997. In the brief, they predicted with eerie accuracy the political pressures that would lead public universities to lower academic standards if the courts prohibited racial preferences. " If affirmative action is ended, inevitable political, economic and legal forces will pressure the great public universities to lower admission standards as far as necessary to avoid resegregation, "wrote Douglas Laycock, Samuel Issacharoff and Charles Alan Wright. The complete end of affirmative action would be a formula for the destruction of the great public universities As it happened, the pressures to lower admissions standards in Texas and California played out precisely as the professors predicted. After the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit banned affirmative action in 1996, the Texas Legislature adopted a series of laws that required the University of Texas to lower its admissions standards in various ways. First, the Legislature adopted a 10-percent plan, " which guaranteed that any students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes would be admitted to any ablic university in Texas, regardless of their test scores, the classes that they took or their ability to contribute to intellectual diversity According to Douglas Laycock, who has reviewed the undergraduate admissions figures for the University of Texas, the school before the 10-percent plan admitted 93 percent of all applicants at the top 10 percent of their high-school classes. Now it has to admit the remaining 7 percent of white and black students who would haveHow I Learned to Love Quotas - New York Times 2 of 5 reason, the law school seeks a ''critical mass'' of minority students that, although not formally a quota, has remained remarkably consistent from year to year and leads to the admission of black and Hispanic students with significantly lower test scores than those of their white and Asian counterparts. Conservative scholars have countered with competing studies suggesting that racial diversity on campus may aggravate racial tensions rather than alleviate them. And in my own experience, the benefits of diversity outside the classroom are hard to prove. Whenever I raise the question in class, a few candid students volunteer that they rarely socialize with students of other races. In light of all these doubts about the nonacademic benefits of diversity in higher education, I had long believed that universities should try to achieve as much intellectual diversity as possible, and let the racial chips fall where they may. I wish I could say there were a single, dramatic moment of revelation that turned me from an affirmative action skeptic into a supporter. But the truth is that my conversion took place over several years, in the late 1990's. After the courts and popular initiatives began to ban affirmative action, I noticed that state legislatures and universities rebelled, deciding on their own that racial diversity is more important than meritocracy. In both California and Texas, the political pressures to achieve racial diversity proved so overwhelming that when each state's universities were forbidden to take race into account in the admissions process, they simply refused to accept the decline in black and Hispanic enrollment that inevitably followed. Instead, universities responded to the widespread political demand for diversity by devising plans that, in effect, lowered academic standards across the board. This response has had some success in keeping up minority enrollments, but at the cost of an even more serious compromise of academic standards than the relatively modest concession represented by affirmative action itself. In other words, I became convinced that selective universities can't achieve colorblindness, diversity and high admission standards at the same time. They can achieve only two out of the three goals. For the most part, schools would prefer to choose standards and diversity, using racial preferences to create a diverse class while keeping standards relatively high. But if the courts order colorblindness, America's finest public and private universities won't hesitate for a moment in choosing diversity as the second goal, allowing rigorous admissions standards to go out the window. This is a prospect that both the Bush administration and some of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court seem ready to embrace. ''If Michigan really cares enough about that racial imbalance, why doesn't it . . . lower the standards, not have a flagship elite law school?'' asked Justice Antonin Scalia at the oral argument. ''It solves the problem.'' I first encountered the argument that eventually persuaded me to change my mind about affirmative action in a Supreme Court brief filed by three University of Texas law professors in 1997. In the brief, they predicted with eerie accuracy the political pressures that would lead public universities to lower academic standards if the courts prohibited racial preferences. ''If affirmative action is ended, inevitable political, economic and legal forces will pressure the great public universities to lower admission standards as far as necessary to avoid resegregation,'' wrote Douglas Laycock, Samuel Issacharoff and Charles Alan Wright. ''The complete end of affirmative action would be a formula for the destruction of the great public universities.'' As it happened, the pressures to lower admissions standards in Texas and California played out precisely as the professors predicted. After the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit banned affirmative action in 1996, the Texas Legislature adopted a series of laws that required the University of Texas to lower its admissions standards in various ways. First, the Legislature adopted a ''10-percent plan,'' which guaranteed that any students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes would be admitted to any public university in Texas, regardless of their test scores, the classes that they took or their ability to contribute to intellectual diversity. According to Douglas Laycock, who has reviewed the undergraduate admissions figures for the University of Texas, the school before the 10-percent plan admitted 93 percent of all applicants at the top 10 percent of their high-school classes. Now it has to admit the remaining 7 percent of white and black students who would have