The Supreme Court‘s decision to take up a case challenging Harvard University‘s race-conscious admissions policies prompted a grave response from college President Larry Bacow, who called the move a threat to “forty years of legal precedent” on Tuesday.
“As the Supreme Court has recognized many times, race matters in the United States. I long for the day when it does not, but we still have miles to go before our journey is complete,” Bacow, previously the chancellor at MIT and the president at Tufts, wrote in a statement.
Petitioners with conservative nonprofit group Students for Fair Admissions had their case against Harvard’s admissions policies granted on Monday for justices to hear later this year. The lawsuit alleges the school’s use of race-based affirmative action has disproportionately harmed Asian American applicants, citing years of data suggesting the demographic had the strongest academics but were admitted at the lowest rates compared to other students.
SUPREME COURT TO CONSIDER HARVARD AND UNC AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICIES
“Those who challenge our admissions policies would ask us to rely upon a process far more mechanistic, a process far more reliant on simple assessments of objective criteria,” Bacow added, arguing “each of us” is more important than “our grades” or “scores.”
The highest court’s decision to move the case ahead brings the eight-year-long legal battle to a head, and justices will hear arguments in October. The Supreme Court deferred a decision on whether to take the Harvard case last June when it requested that U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar file a brief in the case expressing the United States’s views.
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In December, Prelogar asked the Supreme Court to deny taking the case, according to a brief, citing decades of high court rulings affirming the use of race in college admissions and two lower court rulings finding that the college did not discriminate based on race.
“The U.S. Solicitor General rightfully recognized that neither the district court’s factual findings, nor the court of appeals’ application of the Supreme Court’s precedents to those findings, warrants further review,” Bacow said. “Harvard will continue to defend vigorously its admissions practices and to reiterate the unequivocal decisions of those two federal courts.”
