by Nat Hentoff

About the author: Author and syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff writes for the Village Voice and for Editor & Publisher.

As the term affirmative action came under increasing fire, its proponents in college admissions offices decided that diversity would be a far more appealing justification for racial preferences. As William Bowen of Princeton University enthused; “Students of different races, religions and backgrounds . . . learn from their differences and stimulate one another to reexamine even their most deeply held assumptions.”

But when colleges got down to defining diversity, that seemingly expansive term often came up quite short.

Take the University of Washington Law School in Seattle. For years, it was in the forefront of giving preference to “underrepresented students.” In 1996—as the law school admitted in a report to the American Bar Association and the...