

Colleges and admissions officers at elite colleges are sighing with relief after a long-awaited decision from a federal court in Boston upheld the constitutionality of the Harvard admissions process that considers race among a wide array of factors.
Given the enduring influence of race in American society, we may always need selective higher education institutions to consider race as one factor in admissions to ensure that entering classes fully reflect the nation’s diversity. Yet the ruling is not the reprieve many think it is, and should instead be a call to action for those committed to equal educational opportunity.
Citation
Kimberly J. Robinson, Why the Harvard admissions decision should be a call to action, The Hill (October 4, 2019).
More in This Category
Cara Stillings Candal
The United States has been cultivating STEM talent for decades with great success, but that robust talent pipeline is threatened by a growing STEM...
More
There is one group that the court does not put into an identity straitjacket—those claiming religious exemptions.
More
In a 6-3 ruling on Thursday, June 29, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the use of race in college admissions at Harvard and the University of...
More
This story begins with one parent who took his demands for equal educational opportunity for his children all the way to the highest court of our land...
More
Those Who Need the Most, Get the Least: The Challenge of, and Opportunity for Helping Rural Virginia
Antonella Nicholas
Rural America, as has been well documented, faces many challenges. Businesses and people are migrating to more urban and suburban regions. The...
More
He who opens a school door, closes a prison. – Victor Hugo Analogous to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s critique of his leaders’ decision to use punishment as a...
More
At the core of election law in the United States are contestations over the rights of African Americans to participate and be represented in the...
More
Aurelie Ouss
Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure that released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create...
More
This Article examines the legal issues underlying hundreds of lawsuits, claiming unjust enrichment or breach of contract, brought by students who paid...
More
On June 23, 1972, President Nixon signed the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Title IX of the Act has become one of the most important, yet contested...
More
In “A Tale of Two Statutes,” Elizabeth Kaufer Busch takes a hard look at Title IX on its fiftieth anniversary. Her conclusion? That the landmark civil...
More
Between 1994 and 2021, the battle in Washington to strip and then reinstate Federal Pell Grant Program eligibility for students inside U.S. prisons...
More
For two surreal days this week, I sat next to the family of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during hearings on her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court...
More
Strengthening the Federal Approach to Educational Equity During the Pandemic provides a timely analysis of three issues of great national significance...
More
Even though women make up roughly half of the students enrolled in law school today, they do not take up roughly half of the speaking time in law...
More
“Speak Up” and similar studies documented something that many thought they already knew about large law school classes: Male students talk a heck of a...
More
For much of the twentieth century, the U.S. government authorized and invested heavily in segregation and racial inequality. Often it did so through...
More
In Common Cause v. Rucho, the Supreme Court initiated an era of redistricting without restraint. The Court opened the door to state legislatures to...
More