DEI's Unknown Unknowns - Glenn Loury

What do we know about the effects of DEI initiatives? In one sense, we know quite a lot. There are entire sub-industries in the media, academia, and the business world dedicated to measuring and tracking diversity in basically any field you can name. It wouldn’t be hard to dig up more data on diversity than you could analyze in a lifetime. We’re awash in it.

But there are important questions about the effects of DEI that are harder to measure than counting the number of X group of students at a given university compared to Y students. We know that black students can get admitted to most elite universities with good grades and good test scores, whereas their white and Asian peers often must have outstanding grades and outstanding test scores to have a shot at the same schools. We know this.