 While the probabilistic structure of the Berkeley case is similar to other instances of the paradox, it raises an additional question. On a natural way to understand the case, the applicant’s gender is a cause of his or her applying to a more or less selective departments. Exactly what it means for demographic variables such as gender or race to be a cause is a longer story for another day (Glymour &amp; Glymour 2014; Sen &amp; Wasow 2016). But assuming that gender is a cause here, then the department variable is a mediator, and one should not condition on mediators in evaluating the mediated causal relationship. So what is the justification for conditioning on department?