BOOK REVIEW: Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA, by Tim Groseclose.

The main contribution of his book, I believe, is his insight into the minds of the professors and university administrators. As Groseclose discusses, they have an extremely intense desire for racial diversity. How intense? Groseclose says some even lie and break the law to achieve it. The lies, in their eyes, are “noble lies.” The law-breaking becomes, to them, an act of “civil disobedience.” But as Groseclose discusses, sometimes — in order to cover up the original noble lie — the professors and administrators have to tell more noble lies. When the lies become a habit, the result is a culture of corruption and dishonesty.

Groseclose’s book, I suggest, is one of the world’s best case studies of that culture.