Is it legal for government to enforce affirmative action on political views in public universities?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't believe conservative students have any advantage in the law school admissions process (it is, if anything, a disadvantage). The "affirmative action" line comes from post-graduation clerkships with judges, which are much easier to get if you're a conservative given the ideological composition of most law schools vs that of the federal judiciary.

Interesting.  I believe there is something of a tradition of appeals level judges intentionally hiring one opposite ideology clerk to strengthen their arguments?

The increasingly bifurcated hiring process makes this less common now. Most of the liberal judges hire "on plan," meaning they wait to hire students at the end of their 2L year (they'll hire their 2024-25 class of clerks this June, for example). The conservative judges, by and large, do not follow the plan and hire much easier, midway through 1L in most cases. If you're a liberal interested in counter-clerking, most of the spots with conservatives are full by the time you're applying; if you're a conservative, it'd require passing up a lot of openings to wait for when the liberals start hiring.

Why is there a difference in how liberal and conservative judges tend to do it? And for that  matter why do they hire so early?