Paris/Texas: The Indirect Promotion of “diversity” in U.S. and French Selective Institutions of Higher Education

The United States and France are generally viewed as polar opposites as far as the political legitimacy and legal validity of race-based classifications are concerned. Yet the programs set up since the mid-1990s by the University of Texas at Austin and Sciences Po reveal the convergence of U.S. and French affirmative action policies in selective institutions of higher education. That convergence relates both to the main justification adduced to support these programs—the benefits of “diversity”—and the instruments used—namely, a variety of substitution strategies based on the existing correlation between race and place. On both sides of the Atlantic, there is a rise of indirect affirmative action, the causes of which should be the object of future research.