SACRAMENTO, CA -- The headline of the New York Times news article said it all: "62 Top Colleges Endorse Bias in Admissions." In a reactionary last-ditch effort to rescue a failed and unconstitutional policy, the Association of American Universities (AAU) recently bought a large advertisement in the Times to thumb its nose at what the courts, the regents of the nation's most prestigious public university system, and the voters in the country's largest state have stated clearly and emphatically: that there is no place in America for race and gender preferences.

In its ad, the AAU said that it wanted to "reaffirm our commitment to diversity as a value that is central to the very concept of education in our institutions." Thus, the AAU reemphasized its "support for the continuation of admissions policies, consistent with the broad principles of equal opportunity and equal protection, that take many factors and characteristics into account -- including ethnicity, race, and gender -- in the selection of those individuals who will be students today, and the leaders in the years to come."

The AAU's position fails to recognize that the very use of race and gender preferences is, in virtually all cases, antithetical to our constitutional principles of equal opportunity and equal protection. As the U.S. Supreme Court stated in its landmark Adarand decision, "[T]he Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution protect persons, not groups. It follows from that principle that all governmental action based on race -- a group classification long recognized as 'in most circumstances irrelevant and therefore prohibited' -- should be subjected to detailed judicial inquiry to ensure that the personal right to equal protection of the laws has not been infringed." Also, the AAU's claim that the diversity imperative overshadows all other considerations is contradicted by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which has said, "Within the general principles of the Fourteenth Amendment, the use of race in admissions for diversity in higher education contradicts, rather than furthers, the aims of equal protection."

The most infuriating aspect of the AAU's pro-preferences campaign is the support given to its effort by various University of California (UC) campuses. In its ad, the AAU listed six UC campuses as AAU members -- the implication being that these six supported the statement. The vote on the ad by the AAU membership was virtually unanimous, with UCLA chancellor Charles Young admitting he voted "aye." Even worse, Robert Berdahl, the newly hired UC Berkeley chancellor, was drafter of the ad's wording and said the statement gives him a "reference point by saying that I'm not alone on this." Question: why was someone with Berdahl's recalcitrant views on such a crucial issue hired for UC's flagship institution?

Let's be clear, preferences are bias. The UC officials who signed onto the AAU statement support bias. That they proudly do so demonstrates that the UC bureaucracy has become an academic Augean stable. The time as come to clean it out.

-By Lance T. Izumi