one of the schools involved in today s ruling, what is your reaction tonight? well, i think that one of the really interesting things about the opinion that i think a lot of people including harvard president immediately focused on was the supreme court statement, that you cannot consider race in admissions but students can still right about that race in their essays and that admission officers can certainly consider the story that students aren t telling about the role that race has played in their lives and the ways in which that certain qualities might shine through in their essays, because of the way they engage with that story. and so, in some ways for a lot of people, they might think isn t that what affirmative action was doing anyway to take into account the role that race might have played in a story of
a student who is trying to explain who they are? i think the supreme court, you can try to read the courts decision more narrowly to say they just don t want admission officer to consider somebody s race as race itself, but, to the extent that you can tell a whole contextual story about the role of what recent someone s life and the way that the individual that they are because of race and their experience of it that is okay. and so if you focus on that, which i think that many admissions officers in university officials will do, just a subtle meyer certainly called it putting lipstick on a pig, but there is a version of this that actually is what schools were doing all along, taking the context into account rather than thinking of race as a check box. debra, i want to go back to
peter let s talk about what michael talked about a moment ago, this court overturned roe almost exactly a year ago, affirmative action was clearly high up on the rights agenda, what does that say for the right that they won these two massive decisions, decisions on things that all of us here had probably never thought would be in question in our lifetimes. these are two huge goals that the legal right has had for many years of course and many people thought they would never get there, they thought they would be able to trim back on the right to access to abortion, trump back on the use of affirmative action in higher education but not to actually overturn them wholesale as we have seen in the last year, this is the result of three appointees by president trump in his years in office he put on brett cough in awe, coney barrett and neil gorsuch, they all are the majority today you
areas have been upended with the stroke of a pen. yes, of course that tough date for liberals could exceed them at the polls a year from now which is exactly what we saw happen in the midterms. michael, i want to share with president biden and senator ed markey said about expanding the court earlier. congress must act, we must pass judiciary act to expand the supreme court. reclaim the stolen seat and begin to restore its legitimacy in the eyes of the american people. i think if we start the process of trying to expand the court, we are going to politicize it may be forever in a way that is not healthy. a lot of democrats have called for expansion, what is your take on that? right now public support for the court even before today has collapsed to the lowest level in polls ever recorded, there has been a lot of energy around
attorney general, harry, what the court got it wrong. do you make of this, what could they may state and distorted investigators still be looking how affirmative action works for? and they mistake the reality of racism, just as harper said yes, so it is noteworthy and not that usual the times points out sometimes you keep a grand jury and look at strands after that eliminating racial you ve indicted but even that discrimination means is the exception and not the eliminating all of it but it is rule. the obvious thing they might be in fact racial discrimination pointing towards s conduct that that makes affirmative action programs necessary. they showcased in the indictment but don t actually affirmative action and race charge. that is the famous paragraph conscious admissions policies six with two different really help to address our instances where he shows people information. we learned today that one of country s long history of them is involved in the racial discrimination, and c