The real threat to these students is not institutionalized bias but their own educational shortcomings.

David Bernstein makes this observation.

EVER NOTICE THAT STUDENTS WHO SPEND THEIR TIME ON SJW PROTESTS TEND TO BE THE STUDENTS IN NEED OF SPENDING MORE TIME ON THEIR EDUCATION?: Consider this gobbleygook from students at Williams College protesting the potential adoption of the pro-free speech Chicago Principles:

In their rebuttal, the students, who called themselves the Coalition Against Racist Education Now, or CARE, wrote that the faculty petition “prioritizes the protection of ideas over the protection of people [because ideas come from animals? plants?] and fails to recognize that behind every idea is a person with a particular subjectivity [what?]. Our beliefs, and the consequences of our actions, are choices we make [umm, no, many consequences of our actions are unintended and unpredictable]. Any claim to the ‘protection of ideas’ that is not founded in the insurance [assurance?] of people’s safety [you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means] poses a real threat — one which targets most pointedly marginalized people. An ideology of free speech absolutism that prioritizes ideas over people [again: because ideas come from animals? plants?], giving ‘deeply offensive’ language a platform at this institution, will inevitably imperil marginalized students.”

A greater threat to these students’ future than the imagined threat from having the occasional “offensive” (read: conservative?) speaker on campus is that they are going to one of the best colleges in the United States, where tuition costs almost $57k a year plus room and board, and yet can’t competently write and edit several sentences of argument.

I have made a similar observation, framed differently. However, Bernstein's observation suggests yet another way of looking at this. Perhaps affirmative action admissions are the lifeblood of the current wave of critical theory/postmodernist ideologs. Due to academic mismatch which arises from affirmative action admissions decisions, these students are at the bottom of their class and struggle to succeed.

Seeing that they are in a similar boat and are struggling compared to their non-affirmative action peers, they leap to the comforting conclusion that their poor academic performance must be due to institutionalized prejudice against them rather than the more obvious academic incapacity. This comforting conclusion then finds voice in the philosophies of critical theory, deconstructionism, social justice, and postmodernism.

Which raises an interesting question. If you get rid of affirmative action admissions, does it follow that critical theory/postmodernism/social justice theory fades away for want of desperate adherents?