The Logic of Opportunity: A Formal Analysis of the University of California's Outreach and Diversity Discourse

Since 1995, the University of California has been prohibited from employing affirmative action principles in student admissions. In response to this constraint, the UC has sought to pursue a number of other avenues for promoting the selection and retention of a diverse student body. In this paper we look at how officials and staff within the UC system have sought to develop an alternative rationale for managing the categorical problem of identifying types and classes of applicants along with strategies of action that stay within legally allowable frameworks. We argue that a new framework for organizational action has emerged (a cultural logic) which is made up of a dually ordered system of identity categories and institutional activity categories. We use Galois lattices as a way of unpacking the dynamic emergence of this new organizational logic.