The battle lines are drawn. After the United States Supreme Court declared affirmative action in college admissions illegal last month, politicians and university presidents vowed to make the decision a dead letter. Taking them at their word, “diversity” — that is, favoring applicants based on race — will be preserved by any means necessary.
President Biden pledged that his administration would find a “new path” that “protects diversity.” Harvard’s president Lawrence Bacow promisedto marshal the “talent and expertise of our Harvard community” to figure out a way to “preserve” an admission system that results in racial diversity. And the Association of American Universities declared that America’s top 71 research institutions will continue to pursue “diversity throughout the academic enterprise.”
In other words, our universities have ironically recalled George Wallace, essentially declaring, “Racialism now, racialism tomorrow, racialism forever.” But to succeed, they must find a way to subvert the law. Absent direct defiance (and schools may try to hide a fair amount of that), the answer is finding a racial proxy — something that isn’t race but approximates the same result.