Chancellor Carol Christ and several other top UC Berkeley officials say the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today, that public and private universities cannot use race as a factor in admitting students, is regrettable. They warned the decision will reduce opportunities for people of color and thwart the nation’s progress toward racial equality. “Students learn more alongside students who have different beliefs, who have different experiences or identities than they do,” Christ said. “Study after study shows that diverse teams and communities excel at innovation, discovery and creativity, values we embrace at Berkeley.” In its 6-3 decision, the court concluded that such affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The ruling, with the court’s conservative justices in the majority, prohibits practices that have been employed for a half-century in higher education and reverses decades of legal precedent. Berkeley scholars have played critical roles in writing policy and arguing the law on affirmative action at a national level, while others have researched the educational and social impact of race-based admissions. Berkeley News obtained a range of campus reactions to the ruling.

Christopher Edley, Jr., Former Interim Dean of the Berkeley School of Education, Former Dean of Berkeley Law, Director of the White House Review of Affirmative Action under President Bill Clinton, and Faculty Director at Policy Analysis for California Education:  

The restrictions will hobble the efforts of many selective institutions to be more inclusive—ironically, the institutions trying to look like what a truly colorblind society would actually yield. When I worked with President Bill Clinton on these issues, we accepted that rigid quotas are unwarranted, and that the moral justification for being race-sensitive depends on context. It will be great for Wall Street to look like America, but for the military, it is vitally important right now.

Of course, there are other tools, but the work will take much longer and require more resources in funding and political will. I see little likelihood of those in the near future.

In the ‘90s, we blocked rollbacks threatened by Congressional Republicans by adopting the “Mend it, don’t end it” policy. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made the same moral-pragmatic balance in the court’s 2003 Michigan cases, with a 25-year clock. But bias is more resilient than that time frame has allowed.

America took a long, long time to end slavery and then overt discrimination, but has had little patience for remedies and a scarcity of balm. Fundamentally, Americans care about the color lines, but not as much as they care about other things.

Our moral destination should be a society that is colorless, with no evidence of an ugly history or contemporary bias. Colorblindness will not get us far enough.

That said, and as dismayed as I am by this ruling that will delay progress, I am profoundly frightened by the substantial support given politicians intent on marching backwards.