Any day now, the Supreme Court will issue landmark rulings on the constitutionality and statutory compliance of using racial preferences in college admissions. And already the empire is fighting back.
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.