CAMBRIDGE – Ever since economists revealed how muchuniversities contribute to economic growth, politicians have paidclose attention to higher education. In doing so, however, theyoften misconceive universities’ role in ways that undermine theirpolicies.

This approach is said to misconceive the deep structure of discrimination. More precisely, affirmative recruitment and affirmative preference, also called soft affirmative action, will require a comparatively long time to produce a social order free of traces of past or structural discrimination.