This past weekend Stuart Taylor had an interesting review in the Wall Street Journal of Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy’s new book For Discrimination (which I haven’t read). The review begins:
The case for racial preferences in higher education has long been made using sophistry designed to hide the heavy social and moral costs of affirmative action. In “For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law,” Randall Kennedy makes that case with rare intellectual honesty and fair-mindedness. And while it won’t persuade opponents of the policy, the book has the salutary effect of clarifying the terms of the debate.
Gerald Early, a professor of modern letters at Washington University, offered his own favorable review in the Washington Post. I am sorry to see that Early’s review includes, in passing, his ugly and outrageous assertion of a “common conservative belief that blacks are inherently dysfunctional.”