Stephan Thernstrom, Leading Critic of Affirmative Action, Dies at 90

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Stephan Thernstrom, Leading Critic of Affirmative Action, Dies at 90
A prizewinning historian, he, along and his wife, Abigail, was a conservative opponent of racial preferences, favoring school choice and voucher programs instead.

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The historian Stephan Thernstrom in 2012. He taught at Harvard until taking emeritus status in 2008. Boris Feldman

By Clay Risen
Jan. 29, 2025

Stephan Thernstrom, a Harvard history professor and author who, with his wife, the political scientist Abigail Thernstrom, vaulted to national prominence during the 1990s as a leading critic of affirmative action, died on Thursday in Arlington, Va. He was 90. ... His daughter, the author Melanie Thernstrom, said his death, at a care facility, was from complications of dementia.

Professor Thernstrom and his wife were among the earliest, most vociferous and most prolific critics of affirmative action in the 1980s and ’90s, when the policy came under sustained attack from the right. In a stream of opinion essays, magazine articles and books, they argued that the left had embraced a form of racial pessimism that sought to right imbalances through quotas and preferences, rather than do the harder work of education reform. ... “If you need double standards in admission, should we also have double standards in grades, graduation requirements, even professional accreditation tests such as the bar exam?” Professor Thernstrom asked in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1998. “Our point is that racial preferences are a Band-Aid over a cancer.”

He was already a highly regarded historian of social mobility in 1988 when he found himself at the center of one of the first battles of the so-called political correctness wars of the late 1980s and early ’90s. ... An article in The Harvard Crimson reported that a group of students from one of his courses said he had made “racially insensitive” comments in class, including reading from white plantation owners’ journals. Scandal swirled as outside commentators picked up the story, using it as an example of political correctness run amok.

Professor Thernstrom stopped teaching the course and criticized the university for not doing enough to support him. He repeated those allegations to the conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza for his book “Illiberal Education” (1991). ... The affair made him a darling of the anti-P.C. right. He and his wife began writing for conservative publications like Commentary and The Public Interest, as well as skeptically liberal outlets like The New Republic.

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Professor Thernstrom in 1959 with his fellow Harvard graduate student Abigail Mann. The two met that year at a talk by the progressive journalist I.F. Stone and married two months later.Credit...via Thernstrom family

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A correction was made on Jan. 29, 2025: An earlier version of this obituary misstated Professor Thernstrom’s middle name. It was Albert, not August.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [e-mail] more

Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk. More about Clay Risen

[Drum]

1. We're all equal in the end. nt

[Voltaire2]

2. Well he finally did something good. nt.

[Deep State Witch]

3. Wait Until He Gets to the Pearly Gates

And finds out that God is Black. And then he goes straight to the "bad place."