The inquiry began after a teaching assistant detected problems in a take-home test.

BBC: Harvard University file picture

Just as the bilingual school-teaching which California did away with in 1997 obscured more fundamental problems over achieving literacy in any language, affirmative action channelled good motives down a false path.

ECONOMIST: Affirmative action in California

The women who went to university before the second world war faced formidable obstacles: ridiculed by fellow students, refused teaching by some lecturers, denounced in newspaper editorials and often pulled out of study unceremoniously because of problems at home.

ECONOMIST: British bluestockings