Why should race be an admission goal in higher education? The Supreme Court hasn’t stopped examining the case of “Sensior Black Holes in America”
On October 31, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pair of cases that threaten to end “affirmative action,” as has been practiced by America’s colleges and universities for nearly half a century.
Gail Collins: Bret, I’m sure you will be shocked to hear that I’m totally against this kind of change. All sorts of factors are considered when universities pick their next students, even if the top 10 percent of the class are admitted to Harvard.
Gail: If you’re moving on to a college career, you’re going to want to meet a lot of different kinds of people — kids with different talents, different histories, different stories to tell. The idea that race shouldn’t be an admission goal is crazy.
Editor’s Note: Editor’s note: Evan Mandery is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of “Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us.” The views expressed here are his own. You can read more on CNN.
Students for Admissions Fair alleges that Harvard University has discriminated against Asian-American applicants because of their race. An adverse decision would have a negative effect on their freedom and flexibility, according to Harvard.
At a time when the issue of race in admissions has taken on a broader historical scope, it is regrettable that affirmative action can be ended at this point. Harvard enslaved more than 70 people. Its endowment of $53 billion was grown in part from donors who had built their wealth through the slave trade. Georgetown will give preferential admission to descendants of slaves, according to other elite schools.
While Harvard indicated last year that it would not require SAT andACT scores of applicants for the next four years, a recent study has found that test-optional practices which some schools have adopted did nothing to increase the number of low-income students.
Squash and fencing are popular with children from lower income households because of the prohibitive costs. And this says nothing of the explicit preference given to the children of faculty, alumni, and donors, who are disproportionately affluent and White.
It would be a question if this position was used for race-neutral programs. When a lawyer for UNC said that it would enhance the “truth-seeking” function of learning, and “reduce group think,” Thomas, the court’s only Black male justice, was not impressed.
The trial judge, Allison Burroughs, said no. “Eliminating tips for ALDC applicants would have the effect of opening spots in Harvard’s class that could then be filled through an admissions policy more favorable to non-white students,” she wrote, “but Harvard would be far less competitive in Ivy League intercollegiate sports, which would adversely impact Harvard and the student experience.” The First Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Athletes, it said, have demonstrated “discipline, resilience, and teamwork.” Working kids who help support their families have not.
Burroughs bought almost every aspect of Harvard’s argument. She said that eliminating preference for “legacies, applications on the dean’s and director’s interest lists, and children of faculty or staff” would “come at considerable costs, and would adversely affect Harvard’s ability to attract top quality staff and to achieve desired benefits from relationships with its alumni or other individuals who have made significant contributions to Harvard.” Yet Harvard offered no evidence in support of these claims and research has shown that legacy has no relationship to alumni generosity.
Students for Fair Admission in the Context of Race, Justice Elena Kagan, and the President of the National Association for Students with Disabilities
During a marathon session lasting almost five hours, the justices heard from a total of five lawyers. Three argued on behalf of Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The group Students for Fair Admissions was behind the challenge.
Alito said that he imagined a scenario in which a student from Africa would be moving to a rural area in North Carolina where the population is overwhelmingly White. He wondered if it would be OK for the student to write an essay about how he had to deal with some cultural differences instead of taking race into account.
Patrick Strawbridge, representing Students for Fair Admission, said it would be permissible because the preference is “not being based upon race, but upon cultural experiences.”
The exchanged caused a skeptical Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, to exclaim, “The race is part of the culture and the culture is part of the race, isn’t it? That is slicing the baloney very thin.
“Grutter says this is dangerous and it has to have an end point,” Barrett stressed on Monday. She wondered if Grutter was “grossly optimistic” and that in reality, schools would never stop taking race into consideration. She noted that Grutter called race classifications “risky and potentially poisonous.”
Roberts highlighted that Grutter had promised 25 years when he said that there would be an end point when society changed.
“The problem is not the problem”: Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a former clerk of the Constitution, and he said he’d never heard of “discrimination”
The court found that schools have apelling interest in having a diverse student body and that race can be one of many factors considered, as long as it is one of many. In the words of Justice Lewis Powell, “race or ethnic background may be deemed a ‘plus’ in a particular applicant’s file.”
She declined and then Justice Brett Kavanaugh piled on. I understand what it is like to not have a number. He said that it would be hard for the court if they didn’t have something measurable.
The two attorneys representing the challengers – Strawbridge, and Cameron T. Norris from the firm Consovoy McCarthy – are both former clerks to Thomas, a long-time critic of affirmative action.
The Constitution hates classifications based on race, not only because they can harm favored races or are based on illegitimate motives, but also because it’s necessary to provide burdens or benefits to certain groups.
His comments Monday suggested nothing had changed in his thinking. He went much farther than the other conservatives when he questioned if diversity was even a compelling goal for schools.
“I’ve heard the word ‘diversity’ quite a few times, and I don’t have a clue what it means,” he said Monday. It seems to be applicable to everyone.
Why does the United States look like America? Gratz vs. Grutter in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action
But in Gratz’s sister case, Grutter, brought by Barbara Grutter over her denial from the university’s law school, the court upheld the basic concept behind affirmative action. As long as the admissions officer used a narrowly tailored and individualized way, the race of the applicants could not be considered, concluded the majority.
She pressed Strawbridge about whether his group even has the legal right or standing to be in court, suggesting it lacked the legal injury necessary to bring the challenge because race was only one of many factors considered.
“Why is it that race is doing anything different” than the over 40 other factors the school considers, she asked during the UNC arguments. She said there are no points tallied and no set targets or quota.
She said people have to disguise their identities when they get in contact with the admissions office.
Jackson continued his questioning on Monday. She said if there were any ambiguity in the history, the court should not overturn decades-old precedent.
Kagan agreed and spoke passionately about why diversity is important. She told Strawbridge that it appeared his view was that “it just doesn’t matter if our institutions look like America.” She noted that the schools are the “pipelines” to leadership and if they are not racially diverse, other areas in business or the military would also lack diversity.
“I thought that part of what it meant to be an American and to believe in American pluralism is that actually our institutions, you know, are reflective of who we are, as people in all of our variety.”
He’s been a critic of racial classifications. He wrote once that discrimination on the basis of race should be stopped.
She said that colorblindness is a high cost not only to UNC, but to the states and the nation as a whole.
At one point, she raised those trends to push back on conservatives’ invocation of the 25-year timeline the Supreme Court set, in its 2003 ruling sanctioning the use of race in admissions, for affirmative action programs to no longer be necessary.
“What we know, we have nine states who have tried it and in each of them, as I mentioned earlier, whites have either, white admissions have either, remained the same or increased. The numbers for marginalized groups have fallen in some institutions.
It’s far from the first time affirmative action has been challenged in court. Major cases have been brought before the Supreme Court several times since it was established in the 1960s.
In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which established the constitutionality of affirmative action programs, the Supreme Court considered a quota system in place at the University of California.
At the time, UC Davis reserved 16 out of every 100 spots for qualified minority students. While minority students who were admitted that year had lower test scores, Allan was denied admission by the medical school because of his whiteness. He went to court.
In Gratz v. Bollinger, Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher sued over a points-based admissions system used by the university. The University of Michigan granted admission to those who scored more than 100 points on a 150-point scale. Most qualified applicants were admitted since each member of the underrepresented minority received 20 points and each member of that minority group was granted 20 points. Race was not considered in determining the points system’s unconstitutionality.
Notably, in Grutter, the court also said that race-conscious programs should not exist permanently. The conservative Justice O’Connor said in the majority opinion that she expected racial preferences to no longer be needed in 25 years.
Even though Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vote to uphold the Texas admissions policy was upheld, he also wrote in a decision that universities need to demonstrate that race-neutral alternatives do not suffice.
The two cases heard Monday are separate but similar. Together, they seek to overturn Grutter and share a central question: Does any consideration of race in the college admissions process constitute a violation of the Equal Protection Clause?
The court’s newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, has recused herself from the Harvard case but remains on the UNC case. The rulings are most likely to come during the summer.