history of racism and that has got to become an important factor in college admissions. richard, on that point, is it your contention that legacy should be done away with? that that is a holdover that is no longer serving colleges? absolutely. back in 2010 i edited a book called affirmative action for the rich about legacy preferences and those preferences were hard to justify back then, today they re really hard to square with in the sense of fairness. those preferences go to students who have had all sorts of advantages in life, they are the least deserving of an extra break. we saw in some states where they eliminated the use of race, places like you see berkeley and ucla, they soon eliminated legacy preferences and i hope we see that happen across the board. universities are generally concerned about racial diversity and that is one of
against the court s decision today, calling for a new way of assessing applicants. here he is. what i propose, is a new standard. for colleges to take into account the adversities that student has overcome on selecting qualified applicants. let s be clear, under this new standard, this was true under the earlier standard, students first have to be qualified applicants. they need a gpa and test scores to meet the schools standards. once that test is met then a diversity should be considered, especially if they lacked financial means, because we know too few students of low income families, whether in big cities or rural communities, are getting an opportunity to go to college. richard, hold your thought because i also want to bring in elliott williams who is here with me in the studio. one of our legal experts. what do you think about that argument that richard has been making and president biden touched on? i think it is undeniable that income and ones access to
richard, your thoughts on that? i completely agree that first generation college students deserve a break and that is part of what i have long advocated. it s the fair thing to do and will disproportionately benefit black and hispanic students. on the question of gender, i think that is an interesting point. if you do class based affirmative action in a robust way and a fair way, then you should not see declines in black and hispanic representations. we know from many universities that have had to stop using race, usually because of initiative, because one they design the programs intelligently they can get racial diversity. so therefore i do not think that we will see that decline in black representation, the jocularly again if you look at wealth. i cannot emphasize that enough, there is a huge wealth gap in this country that reflects our
are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law. justice ketanji brown jackson, the first black woman on the court, pushed back in a separate dissent, bashing the majority opinion as exuding a let them eat cake obliviousness and said that a damning race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. the supreme court saying that u.s. military service academies can continue to take race into consideration as a factor in admissions, essentially examining those military schools from this ruling. now this was spelled out in a footnote in the majority opinion, but justice ketanji brown jackson calling this out in a dissent, saying that the court is essentially prioritizing diversity in the bunker versus the boardroom. just a schneider, cnn, washington. okay, let s bring in richard kohlenberg, he is a nonresident scholar at georgetown university and an expert witness for the student group involved in bringing the lawsuits against harvard in
essays, or whatever information, zip codes or magazine subscriptions, whatever they are doing to try to figure out people s race, why are they suing them? they absolutely could. the cottage industry, it was my term and it is a little bit cute, but it is. and why wouldn t it be? i think it would be the smart thing to do if this is how you are aligned as an organization or a nonprofit. thank you very much. richard, thank you very much for your perspective it is really interesting to hear from you this evening. thank you for having me. joining me now is university of baltimore constitutional law professor, michael higginbotham. okay michael,. if race is no longer supposed to be a factor, explain what is going to happen on college campuses. well, we are going to be in pretty big trouble in terms of creating racial diversity. it is a difficult time that we are in, college campuses are going to have to adjust because