Using detailed admissions data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC cases, we examine how racial preferences for under-represented minorities (URMs) affect their admissions to Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill. At Harvard, the admit rates for typical African American applicants are on...

Academic seminars are a rather recent invention. Among the seminars that flourished at Harvard during the late 1920s and early 1930s, one played a major role in creating what Margaret Gilbert (1989, 2000) calls a “joint commitment” of its members. Organized by Lawrence J. Henderson, it was...