Reflecting on the U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Regarding Affirmative Action
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court reminded us that the pursuit of equity and justice in a nation founded on dispossession, genocide, and race-based exploitation has always required courage, creativity, and solidarity.
By now, you’ve likely heard that the current Court, which has a troubling penchant for disregarding its own recent precedent, issued a decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College that sharply curtails the direct consideration of race in college admissions by both public and private universities.
Affirmative action through the specific and individual consideration of an applicant’s race has been an important, if incomplete, strategy for advancing diversity within institutions of higher education. In the absence of race-based affirmative action, racial diversity at certain colleges and universities is expected to decline. The impacts will be felt first at elite, highly-selective institutions. We can also expect ripples throughout American life because those institutions often facilitate entry into the halls of political, economic, and institutional power for people of color. Such an outcome further entrenches systemic racism, reinforces white supremacy, and may even set back decades of slow progress toward a more inclusive, equitable society.
While Sterling College will follow the letter of the law, we will also embrace creative ways to continue supporting students of all races – and especially those who have been historically excluded from college learning – in their pursuit of education. In their pursuit of belonging. And in pursuit of their dreams for fairer societies on a healthier planet.
We are troubled by what this ruling signifies and especially about what it telegraphs to prospective college students of color around the country. At the same time, we resist interpretations that promote despair. Race-conscious affirmative action is not the only diversity-enhancing strategy available to institutions of higher education. Sterling and other colleges committed to the advancement of people in the global majority can still endeavor to have their campuses and classrooms more accurately reflect the diversity of the human population. For example, SCOTUS indicated that admissions officers are free to consider race-neutral characteristics that correlate with race or that advance the goal of racial diversity, such as the demographics of applicant’s high school or neighborhood, their “financial means,” their access to “generational inheritance,” and their “status as first-generation college applicants.” Colleges may also form pipeline partnerships with high schools and encourage community college transfers.
Sterling aims to make education centered on ecological thinking and action affordable and accessible to students of all backgrounds and socioeconomic standing. To decrease barriers, all students considering Sterling, domestic and international, receive holistic application review, financial literacy education, and financial aid assistance. This will not change.
We acknowledge that our student body has not historically been and is not currently as racially diverse as we would like. Our College’s leadership team is seeking and exploring new strategies that will help us to attract and retain a more racially diverse community. We appreciate the challenges of living and learning in a very rural, majority white location, so we are also working to provide more support for people of color in our community. Enhancing diversity is central to our mission. The future prospects for vibrant life on this planet only increase when the voices, experiences, insights, and wisdom of racialized people are centered in the movement for environmental justice.
As we affirm our steadfast commitment to racial diversity and belonging, we amplify the searing insight of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote in dissent: “Deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life… No one benefits from ignorance.”