The author argues that across five decades, social scientists largely avoided quantifying how large race‑based preferences were in hiring and promotions. Without that baseline, current claims that DEI cuts caused recent Black job losses rest on conjecture rather than measured effect sizes.
— It spotlights a critical evidence gap that weakens today’s labor‑market and civil‑rights policy arguments and calls for transparent, retrospective audits of preference magnitudes.
2026.04.09
80% relevant
The article is a debate about race‑based admissions in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard) and cites empirical work (Chetty et al., Broockman & Kalla) about selective‑college effects and the electoral payoff of moving to the center — directly engaging with the core claim that affirmative‑action practices are large, consequential, and not fully measured by current debates.
Jerusalem Demsas
2026.04.09
90% relevant
The article is a direct engagement with the effectiveness and consequences of race‑conscious admissions policy — the exact topic of the existing idea. It references the Supreme Court decision against Harvard/UNC, disputes about whether policies helped disadvantaged students or produced unfair harms (notably to Asian Americans), and cites empirical work (Chetty et al.) — all core to assessing the scale and impact of affirmative action.
Steve Sailer
2025.10.13
100% relevant
The NYT’s causal framing and the author’s counterclaim that 'nobody seems to know how big of a boost blacks got from racial preferences.'