What if the Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action?
b'In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court\\u2019s conservative majority appears likely to strike down affirmative action, in a decision expected by this summer. The practice of considering race as a tool to counteract discrimination has been in place at many colleges and universities, and in some workplaces, since the civil-rights era. But a long-running legal campaign has threatened the practice for decades. David Remnick talks with two academics who have had a front-row seat in this fight. Ruth Simmons tells him, \\u201cFor me, it\\u2019s quite simply the question of what will become of us as a nation if we go into our separate enclaves without the opportunity to interact and to learn from each other.\\u201d Simmons was the Ivy League\\u2019s first Black president, and more recently led Prairie View A. & M., in Texas. Lee Bollinger, while leading the University of Michigan, was the defendant in Grutter v. Bollinger, a landmark case twenty years ago in which the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action. The Court\\u2019s current conservative majority is likely to overturn that precedent.\\nRemnick also speaks with Femi Ogundele, the dean of undergraduate admissions at the University of California,Berkeley. Consideration of race in admissions at California state schools has been banned for nearly thirty years. \\u201cA lot of us are being kind of tapped on the shoulder and asked, \\u2018How are you doing what you\\u2019re doing in this new reality?\\u2019 \\u201d he says. \\u201cI want to be very clear: I do not think there is any race-neutral alternative to creating diversity on a college campus,\\u201d Ogundele tells Remnick. \\u201cHowever, I do think we can do better than what we\\u2019ve done.\\u201d'