William McGurn:

No place is more in­sti­tu­tion­ally in­vested in us­ing race to de­ter­mine out­comes than our col­lege cam­puses. The bet­ting is that the high court will come down against what the chief jus­tice once called the “sor­did busi­ness” of “divvy­ing us up by race.” But the uni­ver­si­ties are even now plan­ning work-arounds that will al­low them to con­tinue to do what they’ve been do­ing—al­beit in a sneakier way.

The two cases in­volve a pri­vate school, Har­vard, and a pub­lic one, the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina. Stu­dents for Fair Ad­mis­sions sued both, claim­ing Har­vard dis­crim­i­nated against Asian-Amer­i­can ap­pli­cants and UNC dis­crim­i­nated against both Asians and whites. When the court took the case, Lau­rence Tribe told the Har­vard Crim­son that even if the uni­ver­sity lost, not much would change.

“Uni­ver­si­ties as in­tel­li­gent as Har­vard will find ways of deal­ing with the de­ci­sion with­out rad­i­cally al­ter­ing their com­po­si­tion,” the Har­vard Law pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus told the Crim­son. “But they will have to be more sub­tle than they have been thus far.”