UCLA Program Attracts Qualified Students

In his June 30 commentary, “Colleges Will Just Disguise Racial Quotas,” Richard Sander suggested that the UCLA Law School’s Critical Race Studies program is an illegal end-run around Proposition 209. This is unfair. The concentration has always been about intellectual substance, not student demographics. Plenty of underrepresented minorities have made no credible case for admission to the program; at the same time, many white students have been enthusiastically recommended to the admissions committee.

Granted, there is a “disparate impact,” with relatively more racial minorities showing greater interest and ability in the CRS program. But what’s the issue? If a “law and economics” concentration attracted a disproportionately white demographic, would such a program have to be shut down as sham or discrimination? We’re not fools: We can all imagine a “race and law” program manufactured out of thin air, with a threadbare faculty, that is an intellectual sham. But we can also all imagine a concentration staffed by first-rate scholars eager to teach the most talented students identified by a thorough review of their applications, not only their LSATs. Without cause, Sander provided only the former partial view.

Jerry Kang

Professor of Law

Founding Co-Director

of the CRS Concentration

UCLA School of Law