Not that long ago, higher education advocates regularly complained about the lack of national attention on colleges and universities. A huge win involved a sentence or two in the president’s State of the Union or a governor’s State of the State.
Perhaps we should’ve been more careful about what we wished for. Today, higher education is a hot topic and almost always for negative reasons. Affordability. Academic freedom. Accreditors. And – of course – admissions. Many of us want to put our heads in the sand and let the storm blow over.
This would be a missed opportunity. Higher education is receiving significant attention because all sides recognize that our country’s future depends on how we educate the public. We are in a fraught moment, with starkly different views on what happened in the past and where we stand in the present.
Which brings me to the Supreme Court’s long-awaited decision limiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions.
Terri Taylor
We did not get 237 pages of majority opinion, dissents, and concurrences solely to explain how highly selective universities should do admissions. Instead, those pages exemplify a core debate about our country today: What does race mean in America? How did we get here — and where are we going?
All justices accept the importance of equality in America and believe that the Constitution requires us to pay special attention to race. But they sharply diverge on what parts of history are relevant and what remedies are needed to create a healthy democracy with opportunity for all.
The six justices in the majority acknowledge America’s troubled history with inequality and discrimination but believe that most of the hard work addressing this checkered past has already been done. They see colorblindness as the best way forward.
