Here's the NY Times story, written two months earlier: First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review
It does everything but admit that he was an AA selection:
Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank....
That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.
Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.
The Times doesn't give much of a bio, though, so it's not the "recent interview" referred to in the AP story, where he sneers at "the suburbs." This sounds like he was taking his fictional life story for a test spin. If his mother took him to Jakarta when he was two (1963), they would have lived through some major violence and bloody slaughter.
BTTT since his comments about being bored by the suburbs is back in the forefront.