The Past and Future of Affirmative Action in College Admissions

IPR talks with sociologist Anthony Chen about the Supreme Court and race-conscious admissions

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in late June that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection by using race as a factor in college admission.

Some colleges and universities use race as a factor in admissions, along with many other factors like athletics and activities, to create a diverse student body. Now, they must find other ways to ensure diversity in new classes. The Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which brought the cases, argues that Harvard’s practice violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against Asian American applicants, and claims that UNC violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

IPR spoke to sociologist Anthony Chen, an expert on affirmative action in higher education, before and after the court’s decision about its history, the ongoing opposition to its use, and how universities might move forward.

Chen is currently finishing his book with New York University’s Lisa Stulberg that traces the history of affirmative action in college admissions. These interviews have been edited for length.

IPR: You and your co-author, Lisa Stulberg, have done extensive research into the origins of affirmative action, and you find the beginnings of it in the early 1960s. What did you learn?

Chen: What we learned is that it wasn’t a creature of the 1970s, as many people have thought or assumed. It was a creature of the 1960s. And it was, in a way, a product of the Civil Rights Movement. It arose because deans, provosts, and presidents at certain selective institutions of higher education believed two things. Number one, they believed that diversity was an important factor in the quality of education that they provided to their students. They wanted to try to create a diverse student body for their students—and racial diversity was a special form of diversity that they wanted to provide. Second, they believed that it was incumbent on institutions of higher education to engage with a changing society by preparing the way for the world that would come after segregation. They wanted to make sure that educational opportunity was provided to minority applicants, and especially African American applicants, who could use a higher education to become fully integrated into American society.

IPR: Your research shows that there was a concern about, or belief in, diversity as an educational value. Do the arguments made in SFAA v. Harvard (and SFAA v. UNC) to the Supreme Court affirm, contradict, or ignore the evidence you have uncovered about the origins of affirmative action?

Chen: There’s a difference of opinion among the justices, not surprisingly, about what diversity is, and whether it’s valuable and

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