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Embracing Diversity: The Institutionalization of Affirmative Action as Diversity Management at UC-Berkeley, UT-Austin, and UW-Madison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Daniel N. Lipson
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Abstract

While affirmative action in universities is the subject of extensive empirical scholarship, little research has been conducted on the role of university officials in crafting, defending, and transforming race-based affirmative admissions. Through forty-five in-depth interviews with thirty-nine admissions officials and top administrators at three selective public universities between 1999 and 2004, this study uncovers how a near-consensus in favor of race-based affirmative action has emerged among these players. Whereas scholars, citizens, and activists debate the morality and legality of race-based affirmative action as an equal opportunity policy, admissions decision makers have come to view race-based affirmative action in addition as a central, diversity management technique. This article claims that interest group capture theory and judicial implementation theory are insufficient to explain the diversity consensus. I suggest that neoinstitutional organizational theory has great potential to describe and situate the thought processes leading these key actors to forge this policy transformation.

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Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , Fall 2007 , pp. 985 - 1026
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2007 

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