The hot issue my freshman (and only) year at Washington & Lee University was whether the fraternities should integrate. There were no sororities, because there were no women students, and there were no blacks, because I was a freshman far enough back in the last century that racial integration had not yet come to Lexington, Va. The hot integration debate that year was not over sex or race but the discrimination that excluded Jews from the 16 gentile fraternities and gentiles from the two Jewish fraternities.

I have been reminded of that controversy by a recent kerfuffle at the University of Alabama, where the New York Times reports “a tumultous week” of protests against racial discrimination by the sororities. Under pressure from president Judy L. Bonner, who issued a strong statement that the university “will not tolerate” the continuation of membership decisions “based on race,” the sororities included bids to 11 minority women among the 72 invitations just issued.

Prohibiting any discrimination “based on race” is a good thing. It is too bad that the presidents of our leading public and private universities who will not tolerate such discrimination by any clubs, groups, or organizations on their campuses continue not only to tolerate but to encourage it in their own affirmative action admissions and hiring policies.