Free Republic

In June 2023, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) prevailed in complaints alleging racially discriminatory admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The 6-3 Supreme Court decision in these cases eliminated decades of ambiguity about what aspects of race were permissible in candidate evaluations at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities. Following the Court’s decision, a number of analysts and commentators noted that Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion contained a footnote exempting military service academies. That footnote reads: The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s...

What is racism’s limiting principle? At times, the answer has to do with practicalities: Xi Jinping would presumably enslave every last Uyghur if geopolitical and administrative circumstances allowed it. Or perhaps religion gets involved: One shudders to think, for instance, how the internment of Japanese Americans might have unfolded had not the nation’s residual Christianity stayed certain hands. In most places, thank God, there are not only pragmatic and religious limits on bigotry but social ones, as well. Yes, we humans egg each other on to evil, but we also keep one another in check, perhaps especially where public morality...

The University of Virginia is facing a choice of historic significance: namely, whether to embrace admissions policies based on our colorblind Constitution or to engage in mass resistance to the supreme law of the land. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC, the United States Supreme Court held that the admissions programs at Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s ruling is, of course, binding on the parties themselves. However, this was no narrow decision. The broad constitutional mandate of colorblindness underlying the majority opinion is applicable to the University of...

The latest Pew Research Center polling suggests that a mere one-third of Americans favor considering race and ethnicity in college admissions. Over 9.65 million California voters rejected a proposal to repeal an existing race-based affirmative-action ban in 2020. Now, with their ruling overturning race-conscious university admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and the University of North Carolina (UNC), America’s highest court has affirmed this broad national consensus against race-preferential government action. The 237-page-long Court decision is a victory for what Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, sees as “the transcendent aims of the Equal Protection...

A few months ago, I was summarily fired as an editor-in-chief of the kidney section of the most widely used medical reference. UpToDate is used by tens of thousands of physicians every day, helping them make the best and most timely decisions for patient care. Even as I was fired, UpToDate’s leadership team praised my work. So why did they fire me? Over the previous four years, I had publicly questioned the rise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, in health care, expressing particular concern about its ubiquity in medical schools. That included the institution where I taught and...

Eighteen years ago, I published an article in the Stanford Law Review which documented for the first time the enormous breadth and scale of race-based admissions preferences in law schools. At most law schools, the undergraduate grades (UGPA) and median LSAT scores of enrolled Black students were two standard deviations below those of white students at the same school. Outside of a handful of “Historically Black” institutions (where racial preferences were minimal), Blacks in law school were not faring well. They were failing out of school at more than twice the white rate; half of those who did graduate had...

The evidence is everywhere: American colleges and universities are dying. Not all will die very soon—indeed, probably only a modest portion will. But the trend is unmistakably downward. Why? Is it because, suddenly, Americans stopped having babies and therefore the market for students is drying up? While demographics do play a role (not only birth rates but also international migration), the bigger problems are largely self-inflicted—decisions made mostly within the academic villages constituting today’s modern colleges and universities. Let’s start with a little evidence. Enrollment in universities has fallen consistently for years. National Student Clearinghouse data reveal that, in the...

As a direct result of student complaints that his course was too difficult, Maitland Jones will no longer be teaching organic chemistry at New York University (NYU). Jones has a distinguished record, having taught at Princeton for 43 years before retiring. He then continued to teach at NYU for 15 years because he loves his subject and wants to share his enthusiasm with later generations. The termination of his year-by-year contract came because he refused to lower the standards of learning that students were expected to attain. This serves as a sad reminder of the many things that have gone...

One week ago today, attorneys for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) laid out their cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices also heard arguments from attorneys representing the defendants and the Executive Branch. While the plaintiff held firm on the narrowly tailored position that racial preferences are wrong, proponents of race-based affirmative action brought to the Court overblown theatrics concerning diversity. Putting an end to race-conscious college admissions would, they explained, have devastating effects on campus diversity, which could not be compensated for by race-neutral alternatives. imultaneously, however, these champions of...

In most public discussions, “affirmative action” in higher education is treated as one of the core issues that divides liberals from conservatives. It is rare in public life to hear a Democratic leader criticize the use of racial preferences in college admissions, and it is equally rare to hear a Republican support them. Supreme Court opinions on the use of preferences have typically broken down as splits between “liberal” supporters and “conservative” critics, and many journalists have opined that such preferences are now in great danger because of the six-to-three conservative majority on the Court. The ideological divide on this...

Unless you’re a person of color or a favored minority, brace yourself to be treated unfairly by the Biden administration. President Joe Biden is pushing racial equity — which is very different from equal treatment regardless of race. Racial equity means government will treat people unequally, discriminating against whites to equalize outcomes. For Team Biden, it means closing the wealth gap between the white and black populations. By whatever means. You may think it’s “unfair” to be forced to pay off other people’s student loans after you already paid back your own. But Biden’s White House actually defends debt cancellation...

Bank of America today announced a new zero down payment, zero closing cost mortgage solution for first-time homebuyers, which will be available in designated markets, including certain Black/African American and/or Hispanic-Latino neighborhoods in Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami. The Community Affordable Loan Solution™ aims to help eligible individuals and families obtain an affordable loan to purchase a home. The Community Affordable Loan Solution is a Special Purpose Credit Program which uses credit guidelines based on factors such as timely rent, utility bill, phone and auto insurance payments. It requires no mortgage insurance or minimum credit score. Individual eligibility...

On August 1st, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina submitted an amicus brief siding with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in its attempt to use race as a factor in university admissions. The amicus brief comes at a time when the future of affirmative action is being litigated in the Supreme Court. A group called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which represents college students who allege discrimination based on their status as members of a non-preferred race, has sued both UNC and Harvard University for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits discrimination...

The University of Pennsylvania expanded a program that admitted minority and other underrepresented college applicants into its Perelman School of Medicine under special criteria, including waiving the Medical College Admission Test requirement. The program has “officially broadened” this year to include students from Howard University, Oakwood University, Xavier University of Louisiana, Morehouse College and Spelman College, according to a Perelman School of Medicine news release. The Penn Access Summer Scholars program selects a group of diverse college candidates to complete two eight-week summer mentorship sessions with medical professionals. Upon completion, students may be eligible for early admission into Penn’s Perelman...

Among the arguments against the policy of admitting students to colleges because they have the right ancestry—that is, they appear to come from “underrepresented” minority groups—is the fact that it can mismatch students and schools. At least sometimes, students admitted to fulfill perceived diversity needs are far behind their classmates in academic ability and find the level of rigor in the classroom to be overwhelming. Opponents of racial preferences contend that mismatch has serious consequences that are usually overlooked. Defenders of racial preferences minimize the extent of mismatch and say that the benefits of increased diversity outweigh any costs. A...

The Supreme Court may ban affirmative action, but even if it does, many race, sex, and ideology-conscious “diversity” policies and programs will still remain on college campuses. Regardless of the Court’s decision, state legislators have an important role to play in striking down discriminatory practices in public higher education. Idaho is emblematic of how a “red” state must go beyond banning affirmative action to stop the growth of discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies in its public universities. Idaho joined nine other states in banning affirmative action in the operation of public employment, education, and contracting in...

Starting in the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, American colleges and universities embraced the idea that one way for the country to atone for its ugly history of slavery and racial discrimination was to give preferences to applicants from “underrepresented “ groups. At first, that just meant students with African ancestry, but later came to include Hispanics, Native Americans, Aleutian Islanders and others. Schools began to admit applicants from those groups even though they had weaker academic qualifications than the great majority of the students. The assumption was that they were helping them, because a degree from a more...

In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed suit against the University of North Carolina. Its complaint argued that the university had engaged in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity to the detriment of SFFA members. The suit followed in a line of cases challenging the admissions policies of universities, where students from certain groups were given preferences over students who were not in those groups. In a pair of 2003 cases involving the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court ruled that universities were in violation of the law if they used a rigid quota system (Gratz...

Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re here tonight, it’s because you are concerned that our colleges and universities aren’t doing so well. I hate to be the one to have to say it, but it’s worse than you probably think. Remember when we used to fret about grade inflation? At least then nobody was arguing that grading students (or for that matter the whole concept of academic excellence) was racist. Remember when political correctness was just deeply annoying? On today’s “woke” campuses, it’s not just that someone might wag a finger at you for saying the wrong thing. These days expressing...

Currently, nine states prohibit colleges and universities from practicing race-conscious admissions. That number may soon become ten if a new bill in the North Carolina legislature is successfully adopted. Public opinion polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose racial preferences in college admissions. Even in states dominated by the political left, citizens have made it clear that they prefer students be admitted into college based on merit, not based on the color of their skin. One person who can testify to this reality is Wenyuan Wu. Wu is executive director of Californians for Equal Rights, which is a...