With the Supreme Court’s prohibition of race-conscious affirmative action and the Trump administration’s efforts to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, universities and law schools have been rethinking academic, student, and related programs. As we think through the issues, we have a new resource, law professor David Oppenheimer (UC Berkeley)’s very timely book, The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea by David B. Oppenheimer (Yale University Press, 2025).

Here is the publisher’s description of the book:

“As a war on diversity upends government, corporate, and education policies, the history of the idea of diversity has never been more important. In this contrarian book, David B. Oppenheimer, a diversity skeptic turned admirer, chronicles how diversity became a foundational value of higher education over the last two hundred years, how it evolved as it was adopted in commerce and science, and the implications of the current backlash.”