What's important here is the end, diversity.
Affirmative action is just one means to that end.
Mr. Carnesale is the new Chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles, a great public university in a diverse city. He moved here in July from Harvard, where he was dean of the Kennedy School and then provost. He arrived at a turning point for affirmative action in California. A new policy of the Regents of the University of California, effective this year at the graduate school level, forbids giving preference in admissions on the basis of race or ethnicity. Proposition 209, which has just gone into effect, makes that a rule for all state institutions.