affirmative action 
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/15/2023
Affirmative Action Cases May Force Colleges to Rethink Everything
Some experts warn of a possible lost generation of college students from underrepresented backgrounds if race-conscious admissions are prohibited.
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
12/12/2022
Defenders of Affirmative Action at Harvard Need to Confront Anti-Asian Biases
by Jonathan Zimmerman
It's clear that Harvard's criteria for rating prospective students connect with cultural traits and stereotypes in ways that disadvantage Asian American applicants. But keeping affirmative action and fixing these issues aren't mutually exclusive.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
12/2/2022
The Blindness of the Supreme Court's "Colorblindness"
by Drew Gilpin Faust
"Affirmative action opened a door I would walk through.... My professors, soon to be my colleagues, could imagine me among them because the very notion of women faculty had been given a legitimacy and a thinkability."
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
11/29/2022
Can Universities Protect Diverse Admissions and Excellence?
by John Thelin
The vastly improved technology available to college admissions officers means that a handful of selective institutions can serve the interest of both nominal diversity and elite reproduction, while exacerbating the divide in elementary and secondary educational quality in the nation.
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SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
11/21/2022
Ties Documented Between Legal Activist Challenging Affirmative Action and White Nationalists
by Jean Guerrero
Both the activists behind two Supreme Court cases challenging affirmative action and the funding network that supports them have close ties to overt white nationalists and anti-immigration leaders, suggesting that the lawsuits are less about fairness for all than about advantage for whites.
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SOURCE: Slate
11/3/2022
Some Asian American Activists Helped Build Affirmative Action; Today Some are Working to Dismantle It
by Ellen Wu
The midcentury rise of fascism and struggles for Black civil rights gave some Japanese American activists an opening to argue for principles of proportionality in ethnic representation in politics, education, employment, and other areas, key support for the group of policies that became affirmative action.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
11/4/2022
The Sad Death of Affirmative Action
by Jay Caspian Kang
New Yorker writer Jay Caspian Kang argues that while the benefit of "diversity" is largely uncontested, the brand of diversity that Harvard and other elite institutions want to ensure is circumscribed by the bounds of economic elitism, a far cry from the high moral purposes originally claimed for affirmative action.
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SOURCE: Slate
11/1/2022
Sociologist: Yes, Harvard Discriminated Against Jews. No, It's Not an Apt Metaphor for Affirmative Action
by Jerome Karabel
Despite the enthusiasm of the plaintiffs and the conservative justices for the comparison, Harvard's treatment of Asian American applicants today doesn't match its treatment of Jewish students in the 1920s.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
10/31/2022
History Makes the Best Argument to Keep Affirmative Action
by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman
"The Supreme Court’s continued focus on educational benefits as the legal justification for affirmative action has led the policy’s supporters to play down what may well be a more compelling argument: the need to overcome past and continuing discrimination."
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SOURCE: Vox
10/30/2022
Inside the Affirmative Action Cases Before SCOTUS
Edward Blum is a longtime conservative legal activist who is leading lawsuits claiming that affirmative action in admissions violates the requirement that the constituiton be color-blind; whether there is any such principle is debatable. Includes insights from historians Hugh Davis Graham and Eddie R. Cole.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
10/31/2022
A Roundup of Affirmative Action Takes as SCOTUS Hears Arguments in Harvard, UNC Cases
From left, right and center, and from pundits and legal scholars, a roundup of analysis on the oral arguments in Supreme Court cases that could eliminate race-conscious admissions policies.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
10/31/2022
Defendant in Michigan Admissions Case: Ending Affirmative Action Would be Disastrous
by Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone
The former President of the University of Michigan says that diversity in higher education remains a compelling reason to allow race as one factor in college admissions.
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SOURCE: New York Times
10/28/2022
SCOTUS Affirmative Action Cases Hinge on History of Brown and the 14th Amendment
by Linda Greenhouse
Neither Brown nor the 14th Amendment were driven by a belief in a "colorblind" Constitution; instead, they were rooted in the historically specific context of racial oppression. The plaintiffs in two cases before the court want to obscure that history, says veteran court reporter Linda Greenhouse.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
10/4/2022
Corporate America Copied the NFL's "Rooney Rule"—But Also its Lack of Enforcement
The NFL teams' agreement to interview minority candidates for coaching jobs always had a fault: nothing happened to teams who abused the process and interviewed candidates with no intention of hiring them.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
9/2/2022
Legal Scholar: "Diversity" a Weak Substitute for Justice, Opened Door to SCOTUS Killing Affirmative Action
by Richard Thompson Ford
The cause of equality was dealt a fatal blow when courts and colleges shifted the focus of affirmative action from fighting racism to promoting diversity, argues legal scholar Richard Thompson Ford.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
3/23/2022
A Pledge to Recuse by KBJ Likely Means the End of Affirmative Action
by Keisha N. Blain
With a challenge to Harvard's affirmative action looming, Judge Jackson's pledge to recuse herself means that the Supreme Court is more likely to rule that affirmative action in private university admissions is unconstitutional, with the likely consequence of increasing racial inequality.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
1/28/2022
SCOTUS Could Kill off Affirmative Action with Devastating Results
by Keisha N. Blain
Affirmative action policies have always aimed at changing the nation's long history of racially unequal education; that's why they've faced militant opposition all along, and why a conservative Supreme Court wants to destroy them.
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SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
1/24/2022
Will SCOTUS Take the Opportunity to Ban Race-Conscious Admissions?
A veteran higher education lawyer says that dire predictions that the Supreme Court will ban race-based affirmative action in admissions; narrowly-tailored diversity initiatives may survive despite the court's broad conservative majority.
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12/19/2021
It's Time to Confront Special Privilege in Admission to Elite U.S. Colleges
by Lawrence Wittner
Merit-based admission at the nation’s most elite colleges is severely undermined by those colleges' preferential treatment of the children of the 1%.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
7/26/2021
Can Affirmative Action Survive the Supreme Court?
by Nicholas Lemann
The moderate Republican appointee has always served as the Justice to protect modest versions of affirmative action. What will happen in a pending case now that such Justices are gone from the court? The historical trajectory of supposedly meritocratic admissions offers clues.
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