Cambridge, Mass.
Recent court rulings against affirmative action
have left some college admissions and financial aid officers asking,
“If we can’t consider race as part of the admissions process, then how
can we make sure Blacks, Latinos and other underrepresented ethnic
groups are not shut out of higher education?”
In response, more than one hundred scholars, lawyers, researchers,
advocates, admissions and financial aid officers and students met at
Harvard University to explore this question and identify ways to
maintain access to higher education in an anti-affirmative action
climate.
The conference was the third in a series convened by Harvard
University’s new Civil Rights Project. The project was begun by
Christopher Edley Jr., a Harvard law school professor who served as
President Bill Clinton’s advisor on affirmative action, and Gary
Orfield, a professor of education and social policy at Harvard.
“Gary and I decided last spring that we wanted to start,
essentially, a civil rights think tank rooted in academia, with a base
at Harvard, but with strong collaborative relationships with
researchers in institutions around the country,” Edley says. The
co-founder’s ambition is for the multi-disciplinary think tank to fund
research and publish academic papers on civil rights issues as they
relate to education, with the ultimate goal of influencing public
policy.
“We do not want to be propagandists in the way that the Heritage
Foundation is,” Edley says. “On the other hand, we want to focus
world-class research efforts on the most pressing civil rights issues
and take aggressive steps to disseminate or market the results so that
they help shape public debate.” (For a review of Edley’s new book on
affirmative action, please see pg. 25.)
The April 11 conference, titled “Non-Racial Standards and Minority
Opportunity,” reviewed the effect that judicial decisions such as
Hopwood, Fordice and Proposition 209, have had on admissions practices
in states such as Texas, Mississippi and California. It also featured
research presentations from scholars who have examined the alternatives
to current affirmative action admissions practices, and featured an
open discussion on the implications these court decisions and research
might have on public policy, admissions practices and advocacy.
