The debunker of affirmative action gets debunked.

jurisprudence
Sanding Down Sander
The debunker of affirmative action gets debunked.
By Emily Bazelon
Posted Friday, April 29, 2005, at 8:25 AM PT

Last winter, UCLA law professor Richard Sander was in demand as the debunker of affirmative action after publishing a Stanford Law Review article that said race-based preferences in law-school admissions reduce the number of black law students who pass the bar and become lawyers. Sander's more-harm-than-good claim landed him lots of press coverage and guest spots on NPR's Morning Edition and Fox's Hannity & Colmes. At that point, few statisticians had scrutinized Sander's results—like most law reviews, Stanford's isn't peer-reviewed—and his critics were pretty easy to stuff. "Several people have replicated my study," Sander said on Hannity & Colmes. "And I think it holds up very well."