A Dubious Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education

This book offers eight clear-sighted essays critical of racial “diversity” preferences in American higher education. Unlike more conventional books on the subject, which are essentially apologies for racial reverse discrimination, this volume forthrightly exposes the corrosive effects of identity politics on college and university life.

The fact-filled and hard-hitting chapters are by Heather Mac Donald, Peter N. Kirsanow, Peter W. Wood, Lance Izumi and Rowena Itchon, John Ellis, Carissa Mulder, and the editors Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzschild.

Gail Heriot is a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She sits on the board of directors of the American Civil Rights Project, Californians for Equal Rights, the National Association of Scholars, and its state affiliate, the California Association of Scholars. She was co-chair of both the campaign for California’s Proposition 209 in 1996 and the successful campaign to prevent its repeal in 2020. She blogs at Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy.

Maimon Schwarzschild is a professor of law at the University of San Diego and an affiliated professor at the University of Haifa. He is a member of the California State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Law & Philosophy. He is an English barrister and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris/Sorbonne and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.