According to this article in Inside Higher Ed, Columbia president Lee Bollinger is terribly pessimistic about the survival of “affirmative action” — in more precise terms, the policy of favoring some college applicants merely because of their ancestry. He contends that depriving colleges and universities of that policy is an attack on academic freedom, just as much as if voters decided that James Joyce could no longer be taught.

That argument is absurd on its face and certainly indicates a desperation among the defenders of racial preferences. Come to think of it, though, equally absurd and desperate things were said against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

The “educational benefits” of tinkering with the student body in an effort to get a “critical mass” of students from certain “underrepresented groups” are illusory and a requirement that applicants be judged on factors other than race has nothing to do with academic freedom.