It seemed like a vivid flashback to the 1980’s: a conservative American political leader standing up to denounce affirmative action because its just not fair.

George Bush stepped in yesterday with his big two cents on a University of Michigan case that will soon be taken up by the Supreme Court. The president carefully stressed that strongly supports diversity of all kinds. But he does not, he says, support Q-U-O-T-A-S. Quotas — a word that gives Americans hives in political polling.

But the University of Michigan says it does not use quotas. And that the president cannot have it both ways –rhetorically embracing diversity and legally attacking policies that take race into account, along with geography, ahtleticism, alumni parents and test scores.

This hour, On Point: college, race, politics and the president.

Guests:

Jeffrey Lehman, dean of the University of Michigan Law School

Linda Chavez, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity

James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly

Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University