Status Anxiety

The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, by Nicholas Lemann (Farrar, Straus, 406 pp., $27)

PROPONENTS of racial preferences in higher education are on the defensive these days, having suffered major defeats in the Hopwood case and in battles over ballot propositions in California and Washington. Most recently, fear of legal challenges has led both the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts to back away from the race-driven admissions policies they have pursued for decades. We are not yet at the beginning of the end. But we may at least have reached the end of the beginning.

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Stephan Thernstrom

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The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, by Nicholas Lemann (Farrar, Straus, 406 pp., $27)

PROPONENTS of racial preferences in higher education are on the defensive these days, having suffered major defeats in the Hopwood case and in battles over ballot propositions in California and Washington. Most recently, fear of legal challenges has led both the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts to back away from the race-driven admissions policies they have pursued for decades. We are not yet at the beginning of the end. But we may at least have reached the end of the beginning.