WASHINGTON – Irrespective of the outcome of the pending U.S. Supreme Court case on the use of race-conscious affirmative action in higher education, institutions should remain reflective about how to achieve diversity for the greater public good.
That was one of the major points made during a decidedly one-sided forum at the Brookings Institution titled “The Effects of Racial Preferences in Higher Education Student Outcomes.”
“I’m making a plea,” said Dr. Glenn Loury, an economics professor at Brown University.
“Let us not allow the adversarial process in which a court proceeding is necessarily embedded to cause us to forget the unfinished business of dealing with the consequences of our racial history,” Loury said during a panel roundtable titled “Research, Preferences, Reform, and Fisher v. University of Texas.”
“When our most prestigious institutions, which are venues for globally significant affairs and are a window for society, are devoid of active and effective participation of people of color, Blacks and Latinos, that’s a bad thing for us, especially given our history,” Loury said.
Much of the forum focused on what research shows about whether affirmative action actually benefits the students it was meant to help.
In some cases, scholars suggested, affirmative action is hurtful, particularly if it puts minority students with weak academic credentials in competitive environments.
