THEY'RE NOT EVEN DENYING AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ASTERISK ANY MORE.

A quarter century ago, when university administrations came up with the idea of filling faculty posts without regard to field or area, should a candidate ticking the desired diversity boxes come to their attention, their enablers in the faculty governance committees would respond to complaints raised in meetings that doing so was not judging those candidates on their merits with the not unreasonable argument that against a background of vocational tracking or outright segregation in the common schools, or the more rigidly defined sexual divisions of labor back in the day, nobody was really being judged solely on the merits.

If the purpose of those hires was to expand the talent pool and produce more broadly shared intellectual excellence, that might have even been a good idea.  A quarter-century on, though, it appears as though that talent pool is weaker.  (Or perhaps that tracking and segregation have long-lasting ripple effects, you decide.)

Power Line's John Hinderaker isn't buying it.

The trend toward dumbing down bar exams is part of a broader phenomenon that Paul has written about many times–a decline in standards across many sectors of our economy and our culture, allegedly in service of racial equity. If members of a particular ethnic group are statistically less likely to get over any particular bar, one solution is to lower the bar. Whether this helps in the long run is of course another matter.

It's not "dumbing down," it's just another form of intellect.