Shucking And Jibing On the “Diversity” Front

Finally some good news regarding “diversity”: colleges and universities are confused!

The mood seemed more skittish than celebratory as college administrators gathered at a hotel here [Chicago] this month to discuss the future of affirmative action on their campuses.

Many higher-education leaders had declared victory when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that colleges had a compelling interest in using race-conscious admissions policies to promote educational diversity. But since then, it has become clear to the college lawyers reviewing the Supreme Court’s opinions that other tough legal battles lie ahead.

For starters, legal experts say that colleges continue to run a very real risk of being sued if their admissions policies stray from the court’s guidance and give too much weight to race, lack a well-articulated educational justification, or resemble quotas by focusing too much on maintaining minority enrollments at certain levels.

Institutions may also face much bigger legal threats. Among the college officials on hand here and at similar gatherings held around the nation since June, the chief fear was that the Supreme Court may have opened the door to new legal assaults on race-exclusive scholarship and financial-aid programs, by holding that colleges must treat students as individuals, rather than as members of particular racial groups.

Apparently it has been so long since colleges and universities have treated applicants and students as individuals rather than as representatives of their racial and ethnic groups that they aren’t quite sure how to go about it. Some are wondering whether they may continue to give “some minority members an edge [!] in employment decisions.” It has occurred to others that the courts might “now take a dim view of separate student housing or student organizations for members of specific racial and ethnic groups.”

And what advice are the professional diversiphiles giving these squirming, sweating education officials?

For now, the American Council on Education, the College Board, and some state higher-education agencies have been advising colleges to proceed cautiously.

“A lot of the decisions that will be made are, ultimately, political decisions,” Sheldon E. Steinbach, the ACE’s vice president and general counsel, told the crowd of about 75 college administrators gathered here.

He and other lawyers have been advising colleges that they need to weigh their commitments to diversity against real and potential legal limits, and to decide whether certain policies that could be challenged in court are “acceptable risks” given their benefits.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the dominant strain of the advice seems to concentrate not on changing behavior but changing terminology. Arthur Coleman, a Washington lawyer who served as deputy assistant secretary of education in the Clinton administration,

urged those present to not even use the term “affirmative action,” which typically has referred to efforts to remedy past racial discrimination, and, he said, would be “a red flag” for potential legal challenges if used in admissions policies….

“You are not in the position of being social-justice police,” Mr. Coleman warned. “We are not fundamentally talking about affirmative action when we talk about diversity in higher education. Let’s get that concept embedded in how we think about these issues.”

Angelo N. Ancheta, legal director of the Civil Rights Project, a research organization based at Harvard University, cautioned the college officials gathered in Chicago not to use the term “underrepresented minority” in drafting their admissions policies. Otherwise, he said, colleges will imply that they seek to produce minority enrollments that reflect the general population — a much different goal from the Michigan law school’s aim of having a “critical mass” of minority students, or enough for them to feel comfortable, and free to speak their minds.

“At its core, minority underrepresentation is not a concept that jibes very well with ‘critical mass,'” Mr. Ancheta said.

It seems to me that nothing “jibes very well” with “critical mass” … except “quota.”

Say What? (1)

  1. Richard Nieporent October 23, 2003 at 1:59 am | | Reply

    It would be poetic justice if when the colleges reached their desired “critical mass”, the results followed the laws of physics.

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