One thing we should understand: Affirmative Action works. When we seek to "redress" past inequities in a group, national, academic or whatever, we tip the balance. This tipping is what AA is all about. It is deliberate. What becomes difficult to calculate, however, are all the various impacts on all parties. In the case of pushing/aiding/ensuring that more women go to college, we set the table for an opposite effect on males.

Though many fault the various market theories, my opinion is that, one way or another, everything is a market of some kind. Fair or not, it's the basic, underlying structure in human interaction. Whenever we tip the balance we interfere with the market. This is not always bad. But it is also not always good. And so we should expect that when we single out one group for aid or assistance we are very likely to damage another.

Eventually, if left to its own devices, the academic marketplace will gain a kind of balance, in fact already has. Of course this balance will appear unequal, not really balanced at all. But human endeavor is by its very nature incapable of static perfection. That is why I hasten to remind the Utopians among us that Utopia has never existed and never will. In my humble opinion Utopia is one of the most damaging ideas to ever descend on humankind.

Would that our efforts did not reach for perfection but for simple kindness and common sense.

Oops, that sounds a little bit Utopian.

-- Edmond Keenan Wynn, Cultural critic and bon vivant (posted 1/7, 2:55 p.m., E.S.T.)

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