NCLA’s President and General Counsel Mark Chenoweth chats with Professor Dorian Abbot of the University of Chicago.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology invited Prof. Abbot to give a prestigious public lecture in the fall of 2021. But then the university withdrew its invitation after some students and faculty complained about a Newsweek op-ed co-authored by Abbot. In it, he argued that many aspects of affirmative action—and especially diversity, equity, and inclusion policies—violate “the ethical and legal principle of equal treatment” and treat “people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.”