In the spring 2025, the Trump Administration attached the President and Fellows of Harvard College for Harvard's role in promoting a concept that only a few months earlier had been considered so important — and yet so benign — that it was universally embraced by American higher education: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Harvard regularly touted its DEI efforts, which touched practically every aspect of its educational mission. For these efforts, the Administration punished Harvard with the freezing of $2.2 billion in research grants and the targeting of another $1 billion in grants for a similar fate. In almost the same breath, Trump officials threatened to revoke the University's tax-exempt status, targeted at its ability to attract and enroll international students, and initiated numerous investigations of Harvard's operations. 

Not every bone that the Trump Administration had to pick with Harvard had to do with DEI. But the University's DEI efforts certainly topped the list. As if to prove the point, the civil rights offices of two agencies, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, announced investigations into the membership and article selection practices of the nation's oldest and most influential student-run law journal: the Harvard Law Review. The Trump Administration stated that it will not allow Harvard, or any of its affiliates, to trample anyone's civil rights. 

The irony of attacking the Harvard Law Review in the name of civil rights was not lost on the people who had crafted the plan that set the Review on the path to embracing DEI in the first place. Over forty years ago, the editors of the Review overcame long odds to adopt one of the nation's first affirmative action plans governing the selection of the membership of a student-operated law journal. Their goal was precisely to promote the civil rights of people of color. I know what those editors were thinking because I was one of them. So was Dean Kevin R. Johnson. In 1981-92, we were second-year members of Volume 95 when the Review adopted its headline-grabbing affirmative action plan. And in 1982-83, we were third-year members of Volume 96 when that plan was implemented for the first time. 

This Article recounts the origins of affirmative action at the Harvard Law Review. It proceeds in three parts. Part I tells the late nineteenth and early twentieth century origin story of the Review and the evolution of its so-called merit-based system for selecting editors. Part II tells the late twentieth century story of how, some 100 years later, the Review debated and adopted a policy of affirmative action to address the underrepresentation of people of color on its membership. Part III concludes with some post-affirmative action notes about DEI at the Review and other student-run law journals.