CIR President Terry Pell in USA Today

CIR President Terry Pell wrote about this week’s decision in Fisher v. Texas for USA Today’s Opposing Views:

“Today the Supreme Court gave a new license to colleges and universities to engineer the racial mix of students. Backing away from the court’s decision three years ago to strictly scrutinize racial preferences, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced that courts now are to defer to educators about all aspects of race in admissions.

Missing from today’s opinion was any mention of the 25-year time limit on admissions preferences that the court set in 2003. Also missing was any requirement that schools provide evidence that preferences achieve the benefits claimed.

From now on, the courts are to treat each college as a “laboratory” that can experiment with preferences on its own. Schools need only engage in “constant deliberation and continued reflection” about the fairness of their racial engineering.

But in the absence of a Supreme Court willing to enforce a meaningful legal standard, schools will adopt ever more ambitious preferences.”

Read the rest at USA Today.