Anti-Discrimination Advocates’ New Weapon

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 24, 2025 | Russell T. Warne

[karpov]

The 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard was an earthquake for college admissions. After nearly 50 years, the affirmative-action regime that governed most universities’ admissions processes was declared unconstitutional.

Racial preferences in college admissions have never been popular among Americans. A 2023 Pew Research Center poll taken a few months before the Students for Fair Admissions decision was released found that only 33 percent of adults approved of affirmative action in college admissions. In California, affirmative action in education has lost at the ballot box twice, most recently in 2020. Even when the cultural and political milieu is predisposed to increase support for the policy, most Americans still don’t like affirmative action in college admissions.

Yet, the opposite is true among university administrators. Harvard and the University of North Carolina fought vigorously in the courts for years to keep their discriminatory admissions policies in place. In the 21st century, public universities in Texas and Michigan also took the fight for race-conscious admissions to the Supreme Court. Among university administrators (who lean heavily to the political left), it is a given that a diverse student body is beneficial and that admissions personnel should take deliberate steps to admit as many “underrepresented” students as possible.

This is why the reaction to Students for Fair Admissions from many universities was negative. The presidents of Brown University, Stanford University, and Northwestern University all issued official statements that they were “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court’s decision. They and many other university presidents affirmed their commitment to diversity while still stating that they would follow the law. (For people who claim to be free thinkers, these presidents used eerily similar language in many of these statements.)

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college; collegeadmissions; racialpreferences

[fwdude]

This is just one ugly head of the serpent of the CRA of 1964. The whole thing needs to be trashed.

[Herakles]

All universities should not receive any federal or state funding including Penn State Harvard Princeton and Yale all of them make them work for a living for once

[Verginius Rufus]

Back when the University of California could openly use “affirmative action” to admit less-qualified non-white students, Willie Brown (Kamala’s ex) wanted there to be a law that the University of California would have to graduate students of different races in the proportion they formed of the student body. So if 15% of the student body was black, 15% of the graduating seniors should be black.

[libertylover]

only 33 percent of adults approved of affirmative action [racial and sex discrimination] in college admissions.

Fixed it.