The Importance of Race in Law School Admissions

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At University of Michigan Law School, the median black admit would fall at the second percentile of the white distribution. Affirmative action may still be better for your longer outcomes, but it cannot be better for you in terms of your class rank. This is a mismatch problem, right? That students who have this ambition to become lawyers or doctors end up less likely to be able to fulfill their dream.

Peter Arcidiacono is an economist at Duke University and an expert on affirmative action. Arcidiacono served as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) in SFFA v. Harvard.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Peter Arcidiacono discuss the role that racial preferences have played in the admissions processes of elite American universities in recent decades; the workarounds that universities are likely to use in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision; and why real progress for less privileged students will require fundamental changes that look beyond the admissions practices of a few elite universities.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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