A new study by two former Ivy League college presidents shows that African-American students who benefited from affirmative action at elite universities earned advanced degrees at an identical rate to their white classmates, and were slightly more likely to earn professional degrees such as law, business and medicine. "The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions," by William Bowen of Princeton University and Derek Bok of Harvard University, reveals that these African-American students went on to become more active than their white classmates in community and civic activities.

This November Washington State voters will face a proposed amendment to ban affirmative action in state employment, education, and contracting, with the same deceptive wording as California's Proposition 209, which passed in 1996. Early polls in Washington show that the deceptive language, which claims to promote civil rights by banning discrimination and so-called "preferences" in employment, admissions, and contracting, is misleading most voters into supporting the amendment.

Ward Connerly, founder of the misnamed American Civil Rights Institute, provided the bulk of the funding for the Washington state initiative. Connerly's group was behind California's Prop 209 and has been working in other states to get similar initiatives on the ballot. But Connerly himself acknowledged that his anti-affirmative action campaign badly needed the Washington initiative to win. "We wouldn't be involved in Washington unless it was the only way to keep the ball moving up the field," he said in an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Eleanor Smeal, President of the Feminist Majority, said that a loss in Washington state could end or cripple Connerly's state-by-state efforts to eliminate affirmative action.

Proposition 209 in California is keeping qualified minorities out of the University of California system. Because the university is prohibited from using race or gender as a factor in admissions, the UC system will enroll 12% fewer African-American and Hispanic students in the fall of 1998. The number of women students admitted for 1998 was not available.

Last fall a proposal to dismantle Houston's affirmative action programs lost after the mayor and city council voted to ensure that the wording of the amendment clearly stated that it would ban affirmative action.

"The 209 initiative's narrower than expected win in California, and the loss in Houston, have taken the momentum out of efforts to ban affirmative action at the federal level, at least for now," said Kathy Spillar, National Coordinator of the Feminist Majority. Four bills to ban affirmative action were defeated in the House and Senate, including a nationwide ban on affirmative action in college admissions. Rep. Frank Riggs (R-CA) offered that amendment, which would have prohibited federally-funded colleges and universities from considering race and gender in admissions policies.

Texas is currently the only other state that bans affirmative action in college admissions, based on a court ruling. The University of Texas Board of Regents voted unanimously to appeal the ruling, arguing that the ruling harms the school's ability to recruit students.