January 2012
There have been few moments in our history when
the nation so badly needed institutions to unify the country, overcome
divisiveness, and dispel the unfounded “jealousies and prejudices” that our
first president warned against. As George Washington wrote to Alexander
Hamilton, bringing together the youth “from different parts of the United
States” at a university would allow young people to learn there was no basis for
“jealousies and prejudices which one part of the union had imbibed against
another part.”
Yet if the Supreme Court decides to hear a case
called Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, colleges could be
severely restricted in continuing to serve this unifying function.
A white student named Abigail Fisher has argued
that she would have been admitted to the University of Texas if the school had
refrained from considering race in its admissions decisions and that her
constitutional rights have been harmed as a result. Lower courts decided against
Fisher, ruling that the university’s efforts to assemble a racially diverse
student body complied with the constitutional standards established in the 2003
case Grutter
v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court’s definitive holding on affirmative
action in U.S. education.
A move away from the court’s recognition in
Grutter of the “substantial” and “laudable” benefits of a diverse student
body would be as damaging to higher education as it would be ill-timed for the
nation at large. When students encounter others’ points of view and discover how
contrary opinions have been forged by different life experiences, they learn
more than how we differ: They learn what we have in common.
The places in U.S. society where people of
different backgrounds have a meaningful opportunity to learn about each other
are far too rare. Yet instead of cultivating these unifying social institutions,
we have been undermining them. Sixteen years ago, California adopted a ballot
measure banning the consideration of race in admissions decisions. Within five
years, only 3 percent of the students in California’s public law schools were
African American (compared with 10 percent at the state’s private law schools),
and black enrollment declined throughout the state system. Similar ballot
measures have passed in Arizona, Washington state and Michigan, where a federal
appellate court is reviewing the law’s constitutionality. This year, New
Hampshire banned admissions policies that value racial diversity.
Especially in this era of economic insecurity,
the argument is made that diversity in post-secondary schools should be focused
on family income rather than racial diversity. Of course, we want both. When
universities are granted the freedom to assemble student bodies featuring
multiple types of diversity and possess the resources to support “need blind”
admissions with full financial aid, the result is a highly sought-after learning
environment that attracts the best students.
Consider Columbia, where our undergraduate
student body has the highest percentage of low- and moderate-income students and
the largest number of military veterans of our peer institutions, as well as the
highest percentage of African American students among the nation’s top 30
universities. But our country cannot rely on private universities such as
Columbia to realize these benefits. Far more students attend our great public
universities, where a combination of declining state support and unfavorable
ballot measures pose a serious risk to our model of higher education.
Dismantling an educational system that for
decades has valued contact among students with different sensibilities and
replacing it with one that does not would be regrettable on many fronts. Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger that
the benefits of a diverse student body are “not theoretical but real”: Indeed,
more than five dozen leading corporations, including Microsoft, General
Electric, Shell Oil and 3M, told the court in 2003 that students learning in
diverse educational settings can be expected to be better workers. These
companies cited skills ranging from creative problem solving and the ability to
develop products with cross-cultural appeal to the employees’ ease with global
business partners and their positive effect on the work environment. In an
amicus brief submitted to the court, retired U.S. military leaders also
advocated racially diverse student bodies, noting that with minorities
constituting 40 percent of the active-duty armed forces as of 2002, “success
with the challenges of diversity is critical to national security.”
Last month, the departments of Education and
Justice announced new guidance on the implementation of Grutter intended
to encourage schools embracing the educational benefits of a diverse student
body. The action is a strong antidote to what had been a prevailing vagueness in
legal guidance and its attendant chilling effect on university presidents and
admissions officers. But the impact could be short-lived, for it will remain
relevant only so long as the rationale for considering race in admissions
remains constitutionally valid.
This is the wrong time for the Supreme Court to
abandon its decades-old commitment to the role colleges and universities play in
unifying and elevating U.S. society. To ensure the nation’s prosperity and
fulfill our founding ideals of equal opportunity, the court should stand by its
strong endorsement of diversity in higher education.
Lee C. Bollinger is currently president of
Columbia University, and was president of the University of Michigan when the
admission decisions against Gratz and Grutter took place.
SAFS Editor’s note: It was gratifying to see
that the comments to Bollinger’s opinion were overwhelmingly negative – http:/washingtonpost.com/opinions/college-diversity-at-risk/2012/01/13gIQACxpn1P_story.html
Washington
Post, January 15, 2012.
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