Harvard and Dartmouth promise to keep discriminating on the basis of race

Today, the Supreme Court decided that the race-based preferences in college admissions granted by Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional. In doing so, the Court rejected goals such as “better educating students through diversity” as constitutionally adequate grounds for race-based admissions. Ed Whelan provides an excellent summary of the decision of the Court and its implications.

In response to the Court’s decision, the presidents of Harvard and Dartmouth promptly assured their communities that, in the name of diversity, they intend to keep discriminating on the basis of race. Here is what Harvard’s president told “Members of the Harvard Community”:

Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.

We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday. So too are the abiding values that have enabled us—and every great educational institution—to pursue the high calling of educating creative thinkers and bold leaders, of deepening human knowledge, and of promoting progress, justice, and human flourishing.

We affirm that:

• Because the teaching, learning, research, and creativity that bring progress and change require debate and disagreement, diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence.

• To prepare leaders for a complex world, Harvard must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience. No part of what makes us who we are could ever be irrelevant.

• Harvard must always be a place of opportunity, a place whose doors remain open to those to whom they had long been closed, a place where many will have the chance to live dreams their parents or grandparents could not have dreamed.

For almost a decade, Harvard has vigorously defended an admissions system that, as two federal courts ruled, fully complied with longstanding precedent. In the weeks and months ahead, drawing on the talent and expertise of our Harvard community, we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.

The heart of our extraordinary institution is its people. Harvard will continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world. To our students, faculty, staff, researchers, and alumni—past, present, and future—who call Harvard your home, please know that you are, and always will be, Harvard. Your remarkable contributions to our community and the world drive Harvard’s distinction. Nothing today has changed that.

Harvard thus vows to preserve its “essential value” of maintaining a racially diverse student body. And, in Harvard’s view, this essential value cannot be satisfied unless its admissions policy ensures that “many” of those who belong to groups that may have experienced discrimination at Harvard’s hands generations ago gain entry to the college.

What can this mean, other than that — notwithstanding its perfunctory nod to the Supreme Court’s just-issued decision — Harvard will find a way, by hook or by crook, to continue to take race into account in its admissions policies so as to obtain the degree of diversity, especially black representation, it deems essential?

Dartmouth’s new president offered a similar message, with some “let’s-all-try-to get-along” pap mixed in:

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly limited how colleges and universities may consider race in their admissions policies and practices.

First, I want to be absolutely clear: This decision in no way changes Dartmouth’s fundamental commitment to building a diverse and welcoming community of faculty, students, and staff, as articulated in our institutional values. Diversity, including racial diversity, is vital to our mission of knowledge creation in service to society. Research (see here, here, here, and here) shows that diverse teams lead to better outcomes. While there will be differences of opinion and robust discussion about the ruling itself, we begin the conversation from this common, foundational understanding that a diversity of lived experiences and perspectives enriches discovery and the Dartmouth education—it makes Dartmouth stronger. As an institution with an imperfect history when it comes to embracing diversity, it is important that we not only state our values but that they inspire our actions.

I want to acknowledge the strong emotional response the Court’s decision is already provoking, across the nation and among our community. It is crucial that each of us listen to, show respect for, and support one another, especially when our opinions differ. Dartmouth brings a uniquely powerful combination of expertise across intellectual disciplines and experience in solving complex problems—and that, in turn, places upon us a special responsibility to collaborate productively to help lead our country and our world to a better future.

In anticipation of today’s ruling, Provost David Kotz has been meeting regularly with the admissions deans from across the institution, and other institutional partners, to discuss how to comply with the ruling and adapt their holistic admissions processes to this new legal landscape. In coming weeks and months, you will hear more about opportunities for all of us to learn, examine, and work together on the broader impact of these rulings in our community and beyond.

I am grateful to be part of a community that cares deeply about the challenges that face our society and responds with resolve, creativity, and a deep commitment to our shared values.

In other words, Dartmouth considers “racial diversity” to be “vital to [its] mission” and, indeed, imperative given the college’s “imperfect history when it comes to embracing diversity.” Therefore, Dartmouth’s commitment to maintaining the diverse community its policies have created — including a robust level of black representation in the student body — is “unchanged” and will “inspire [its] actions.”

In fact, admits its new president, Dartmouth has already started plotting how to keep black admissions high and how better to disguise its race-based preference for blacks through “holistic admissions processes.”

I have no doubt that colleges and universities throughout the land are issuing similar statements. Those who may want to challenge the discriminatory results of this defiant attitude should collect these statements and keep them on file.

In this regard, I’ll note that Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the successful litigation against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, says it will continue to monitor college admissions policies. You can watch the press conference Students for Fair Admissions held today by going here.