John and I have been longtime advocates of ending racial preferences in affirmative action. Now that the Supreme Court has taken momentous action on that front, we’re left asking what the next step is. In this clip from our most recent conversation, John and I talk about the accusation that African American critics of affirmative action are “pulling the ladder up behind us” and how universities may still find workarounds to maintain their preferred ideas about campus “diversity.”
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Also Roberts's blessing for "how race has affected his or her life" does not necessarily mean that race will be a source of hardship in these essays. Race can also be a source of resilience and bringing important values to the intellectual life of the university as when the ITF junior reporters were impressed by Clervie Ngounoue (winner of the most recent junior Wimbledon; American)'s boards stating "my values" and "my goals". (This may not be the greatest example as she is almost certainly not going to go to college.)
Under Glenn and John's influence I thought that Roland Fryer and Tomiko Brown Nagin wrote the two best op-eds in the "after affirmative action" special section. But absent a plan like Fryer's if John supports class-based affirmative action as he says that he does then he has supported a small amount of social work as part of the function of the university. Even the function of exposing students to "the vastness of it" can be considered a kind of social work.