A Harvard Without Affirmative Action?

With the United States Supreme Court’s expanded conservative majority set to take up lawsuits seeking to strike down affirmative action in American higher education, analysts on both sides of the issue seem to agree about one thing: race-conscious admissions policies are likely on the way out. The suits, which target the use of race in admissions at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, have thrust Harvard to the forefront of the latest chapter in America’s decades-long debate about affirmative action. The anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions first sued Harvard in 2014, alleging that the school’s admissions practices discriminate against Asian American applicants. Should the court rule in favor of SFFA, admissions policies at colleges and universities across the country would be thrown into flux. Scholars have said racial diversity at Harvard and other elite institutions may decline — but exactly how the decision will manifest remains unclear even as Harvard’s court date nears. If the court rules against Harvard and UNC, justices would overturn long-standing precedent regarding the use of race in college admissions. “The leaked opinion in the abortion case, if it holds up, makes clear that this is a court that doesn’t really care about precedent,” said UNC law professor Theodore M. SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the affirmative action case last February, asking justices to overturn precedent established by Grutter v. But others — including Harvard — say universities should be able to consider race as a factor in admissions in order to promote diversity. David Hinojosa, director of the Education Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the SFFA’s lawsuits aim to return college admissions to outdated methods. “We’re confident — if the court decides to follow precedent and decides to follow with the spirit of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause — that race-conscious diversities and the compelling interest in diversity will be upheld,” Hinojosa said, referring to the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. “The idea that the federal government could tell the Harvard Corporation in 1787 how to run its admissions? That’s exactly why the First Amendment was there in the first place,” Lake said. Shaw said the conservative composition of the court will make opportunities for African American and Latinx students less available. A 2022 Pew study found that 59 percent of Black people said race should not be considered as a factor in college admissions — down from 62 percent in 2019. “Those who advocate for the continuation of race as an admissions factor are working against the convictions and preferences of blacks and Hispanics,” Blum wrote.

While 15 legal and admissions experts said in interviews with The Crimson this month that the Supreme Court is likely to side with SFFA in the fall, few were sure of how Harvard’s admissions process would transform as a result. Vinay Harpalani, a law professor at the University of New Mexico, said elite private schools like Harvard may soon enter “uncharted territory” by being unable to consider race in admissions for the first time in history. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court in opposition of SFFA’s case, Harvard said diversity enabled by race-conscious admissions promotes a “more robust academic environment. “They can emphasize admitting students for whom English is a second language, and that will increase diversity in a variety of ways in terms of ethnicity and national origin,” said David B. Darnell Hunt, the dean of Social Sciences at UCLA, said high school conditions — a factor that UCLA and Berkeley consider in admissions — can serve as a proxy for race. “Students who do really, really well in under-resourced high schools and have overcome all kinds of barriers are going to get a bump in the process,” he said. Still, experts maintained that no other factor is as effective as race in achieving racial diversity in admissions. “The reason that universities have considered race for so long is that they’ve looked at many factors, and there are not good replacements,” said Kimberly J. Other scholars say colleges should not consider demographics at all in admissions. “I believe that a purely meritocratic method of admission will result in diversity,” Dershowitz said. Harvard College spokesperson Rachael Dane declined to comment for this story, saying the school “will not speculate. Though the Supreme Court’s ruling could strike down the use of race as a factor in admissions nationwide, nine states — Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington — already bar race-based affirmative action. In California, residents voted to eliminate affirmative action in 1996 on Proposition 209, a decision upheld by voters again in 2020. {shortcode-a8e36a45e60aec9c3b9ce51d59a24aada0157167} Hinojosa said many universities, including California’s public colleges, “still struggle” with enrolling underrepresented minorities.

During a 2019 trial in federal court, both Harvard and SFFA hired economists to simulate what the racial composition of Harvard College’s Class of 2019 would have been if the school eliminated the consideration of race as a factor in its admissions process. Both simulations showed that the number of Black students at Harvard would decrease by more than half, enrollment of Latinx students would decrease by almost a third, and Asian American enrollment would increase by nearly 30 percent. Harpalani, the UNM professor, said resources that Harvard and other selective private institutions have at their disposal give the schools a greater opportunity to enhance diversity compared to most public schools in states where the use of race is banned. “They’re not constrained by other state policies in terms of where they draw their students from,” he said. On Harvard’s campus, students said they are fearful of the potential impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the SFFA case. “I’m fearful that future generations of Harvard students — or students at whatever university — will not have their full stories heard,” Cooke said. Thuong Quynh “Alexandria” Ho ’24, co-president of Harvard Asian American Women’s Association, said AAWA and other cultural organizations at Harvard will continue advocating for campus diversity, even if the Supreme Court bans race-based affirmative action. “The way the media portray it is like an issue of Asian Americans versus other ethnic groups, but I want to show people that the solidarity is there,” Ho said. Cooke said he believes affinity groups, especially for Black and Latinx students, will become “a lot more important” for students of those identities if the Supreme Court rules against Harvard’s race-conscious admissions. “The support that both groups can provide will be really beneficial, especially in a community where maybe one in 10 of the students in your classes have the same background as you,” Cooke said. Kaitlyn Tsai ’25, AAWA’s other co-president, said the potential decrease in the acceptance of Black and Latinx students would make diversity efforts on campus more difficult. “Without their voices, it is not very likely that a campus that is more dominated by white students will be as aggressive about promoting diversity,” said Tsai, a Crimson Magazine editor. Jane Sujen Bock ’81, who serves on the board of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard — an alumni organization dedicated to improving diversity and inclusion at the University — wrote in an email that Harvard must increase curricular diversity offerings in the face of the affirmative action suit. “With the rise of voter suppression, white supremacy, educational censorship, LGBTQ opppression, abortion restrictions, and hate crimes, Harvard must focus not only on student and faculty diversity but on curricular offerings like Ethnic Studies and community engagement experiences that will educate leaders who can bring us together,” Bock wrote. Some students said they fear that a ban on affirmative action will have broader cultural implications on campus.

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