Interesting article in today’s Inside Higher Ed:  New Arguments on Affirmative Action, by Scott Jaschik:

Two articles — one just published and one forthcoming — challenge some conventional wisdom about affirmative action in higher education. Early buzz suggests that the pieces may attract considerable attention and challenge both critics and defenders of affirmative action.

One article [Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action: Asian Pacific Americans Are Still Caught in the Crossfire, by William C. Kidder (UC-Davis)] — in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law — takes on the view that the primary beneficiaries of the end of affirmative action in college admissions would be Asian American applicants. The piece analyzes some of the same data that has been used to make that argument and says that what it really shows isn’t that affirmative action hurts Asian Americans but that “negative action” (in other words, discrimination) is placing a limit on the enrollments of Asian Americans.

The other article [The Racial Paradox of the Corporate Law Firm, by Richard H. Sander (UCLA)] [blogged here yesterday] — not yet available online or published — will appear in the North Carolina Law Review. This article examines the attrition of black lawyers from top law firms and links their departures to their poor grades in law school, which in turn the author has previously attributed to the use of affirmative action to admit minority law students who, on average, can’t compete at the same level with their white colleagues