Liliana M. Garces, assistant professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University, said the court’s majority opinion in the case — known as Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin — “reflects a robust understanding of diversity.”
“Diversity is not only about numbers, it is also about inclusion,” Garces said. “It’s about the interactions that take place among students, the particular context in which these interactions take place, and the conditions that help generate cross-racial interactions.”
She said all those factors “help generate the benefits of diversity” but added that institutions of higher education must do more to document it.
“By gathering evidence across these dimensions, institutions can help develop a record of evidence that relates to the ongoing justification of using race in admissions,” Garces said.
Garces made her remarks Tuesday during a panel discussion titled “After Fisher: What the Supreme Court’s Ruling Means for Students, Colleges, and the Country.” The forum was convened by the American Educational Research Association, or AERA.
Garces echoed a key element of the Fisher ruling that said the ruling does not necessarily mean that UT Austin may continue to use its race-conscious admissions policy “without refinement,” but that the university has an “ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies.”
