Style, not Substance.

• Author: Kahlenberg, Richard D.
• Position: Review

Affirmative action is not as liberal as you think

THE SHAPE OF THE RIVER:

Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions

By William G. Bowen and Derek Bok

Princeton University Press, $24.95

The Shape of the River, says The New York Times, is meant to "lead the charge in a liberal counteroffensive" on affirmative action. But the study, conducted by former Princeton president William Bowen and former Harvard president Derek Bok, is neither a "counteroffensive" nor particularly "liberal." The book successfully rebuts only the weakest second-tier arguments against affirmative action, leaving the central attack on racial preferences standing. At the same time, the book is profoundly conservative, rejecting the moral arguments for affirmative action in favor of more "pragmatic" considerations, dismissing as wrongheaded widely-held concerns about fairness in the university admissions process, and rejecting any significant role for universities in promoting social mobility by reaching out to disadvantaged applicants.

As a basis for their study, Bowen and Bok constructed an important new database involving more than 45,000 students from the entering classes of 1976 and 1989 at 28 selective universities. The data generated are of enormous value, shedding new light on subjects that have been shrouded in secrecy: the nature and extent of racial preferences at elite universities, the relative performance of those admitted with preferences, and, most significantly, the eventual success of preferred students in the workplace.

The biggest limitation to the data is Bowen and Bok's decision to restrict analysis to blacks and whites, an unfortunate decision now that the number of Hispanic youth has officially surpassed the number of blacks in the United States. The decision to exclude Asian-Americans is also troubling since Asians play a poignant role in the affirmative action debate as a minority group generally believed to be hurt by race-sensitive admissions.

Bowen and Bok's book seeks to do three things: demonstrate that affirmative action has been a success in creating diverse university learning environments and in promoting qualified blacks into the professional middle class; establish that eliminating racial preferences would undercut these positive gains and that alternatives to racial preferences are wanting; and convince readers that race should be considered an element of "merit" broadly defined. We take each of these three arguments in turn.

Over the Rainbow

Bowen and Bok's data make clear that affirmative action has been good for blacks and good for diversity, effectively rebutting several of the more extreme arguments made by opponents of such programs. The authors find that blacks admitted to the 28 elite colleges were in fact able to compete. Although...