At the end of this month, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear arguments in two closely watched cases on affirmative action in higher education. They’re widely expected to overturn the 1978 case that allowed racial diversity to become an organizing principle for college admissions. Like Roe v. Wade, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke is a major precedent from the 1970s that has been reaffirmed in subsequent Supreme Court decisions. But unlike the decision to overturn Roe, which returned the question of abortion to the states, repealing Bakke would make using race in university admissions illegal nationwide as a violation of the equal protection of the laws.
The ramifications will be enormous not only for universities, but for the broader culture.
Nearly all selective colleges and universities treat race as one factor in “holistic” admissions decisions, enabling them to enroll classes that are roughly racially representative of the general national population (except for Asian-Americans, who today significantly outpace their national numbers in admissions). At Harvard, for example, the admitted class of 2026 was 15.2% African American, 12.6% Latino and 27.9% Asian American. More broadly, the powerful ideology of diversity, which has become deeply rooted across a wide range of institutions of American life, is about to undergo radical challenge and transformation from the courts.
