A Dubious Expediency
Webinar Event | July 16th | 2 pm ET
Over the last half-century, racial preference policies have allowed admissions offices to judge students based on the color of their skin for the sake of “diversity.” This abandonment of equality for equity has led to striking changes in the way Americans think about identity and has further led to questions about the purpose of America’s higher education institutions.
Should universities be “great equalizers”? Is a college degree the only means to greater earnings and financial stability? How should an institution admit students to meet an unwritten quota of racial identities on campus without practicing racial discrimination?
These questions all stem from the now-famous Bakke case in 1976, when the California Supreme Court had to decide whether what some view as the “good kind” of race discrimination—preferential treatment for minorities in college and university admissions—is legal. Writing for the majority, Justice Stanley Mosk explained: “To uphold [the University of California’s argument for race-preferential admissions] would call for the sacrifice of principle for the sake of dubious expediency and would represent a retreat in the struggle to assure that each man and woman shall be judged on the basis of individual merit alone.”
Join the National Association of Scholars on July 16th at 2 pm ET as we are joined by Professors Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzchild to discuss the “dubious expediency” of racial preferences.
The discussion will be moderated by NAS president Peter W. Wood.
Buy the book, A Dubious Expediency: How Racial Preferences Damage Higher Education, edited by Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzchild, on Amazon.
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash
