On the 21^st of August 2024, MIT published the demographics for their incoming class, the Class of 2028. Soon after, a post on X from Dr. Steven McGuire (@sfmcguire79), a journalist who also holds a position as the Paul and Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, showed a table of the self-reported ethnicity statistics from the previous entering class next to the current one. This post has since garnered 3.3 million views and ignited a heated debate around changes in two of the six ethnicity categories presented: Black/African American and Hispanic/Latine. Such buzz has generated specifically because of the caption McGuire write above the table, which read: “BREAKING: MIT has published the profile of its incoming class, the first admitted in the wake of the SCOTUS decision again[st] affirmative action.”

            A Pew Research study done in 2023 revealed that 8 out of 10 American adults are familiar with the term “affirmative action,” and 63% of those surveyed felt opposed to its removal[1]. At the same time, the conversation around affirmative action often quickly turns to discussions on “quotas” and “reverse discrimination,” despite the fact that no legal framework ever mentions or requires a quota, and the latter simply does not exist. Which begs the question: what exactly is affirmative action?

            The basis of affirmative action, at least in university settings, is a series of laws and court cases around the subject of labor. As outlined in Cornell Law School’s history on affirmative action, the concept itself is defined as “a set of procedures designed to; eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future.”[2] It first appeared in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, who passed Executive Order 10925, which established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Under it, no employer could discriminate against any applicant on the bases of “race, color, creed, or national origin.”[3] In the ensuing years of the Civil Rights movement, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expanded that decree to include banning discrimination on the basis of sex.[4] Many universities, as recipients of federal funding, are required to fall into line with what the Office of Civil Rights enforces under anti-discrimination laws, which do include Title VII and therefore include affirmative action.

But then, if affirmative action most broadly means that no institution is allowed to discriminate on the basis of many factors beyond just race, it might seem odd that race is the only point being mentioned in many conversations. That is, until you consider that many of the court cases surrounding affirmative action are centered on race. The very first of that list is the monumental Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which ruled that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, ushering in the era of desegregation. Reagents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) followed next, which banned universities from having racial quotas—subsequent court cases saw a stricter expectation of “scrutiny” when considering race as a factor in admissions. The University of Michigan was then involved in two cases in 2003, Gratz v. Bollinger (2003) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which established that schools could not have a points system in place that awarded students points on the basis of race (Gratz) but did allow for universities to consider race as one factor in a holistic assessment of a student’s profile (Grutter). A case against the University of Texas at Austin in 2016 came to a similar conclusion in the Grutter v. Bollinger case, stating that, if race was “a factor of a factor of a factor,” it fell under the requirement of “strict scrutiny.”[5]

While discriminating by race isn’t the only thing that affirmative action is meant to prevent, it’s clearly a very important part of it. Which brings us back to the post on X, wherein Black student enrollment was down 10% from the previous year and Hispanic/Latine students dropped by 4%. (It is, of course, also worth noting that Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander representation in the Class of 2028 dropped down to 0% from 1%, though it was not a statistic that attracted as much attention as the aforementioned two.) This change, of course, follows on the heels of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the case that struck affirmative action down on the basis of not following the rules of strict scrutiny set out by Bakke—a change that social scientists saw coming.[6]

The day that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Students for Fair Admissions, Stanford University published an interview with members of its social sciences faculty.[7] Some members felt that the decision undermined science that has existed for decades showing to the importance of racially diversifying educational environments, and others acknowledged that affirmative action was never meant to be a permanent system but that it served an important part in the fight for an equitable society. Dr. David B. Grusky, a sociologist who serves as the Director of the Center of Poverty and Inequality, put it quite concisely when he said that the “decision rests on the pretense that we live in a colorblind world in which all children have an equal opportunity to build a resume that will appeal to elite colleges.” Because, at the end of the day, the real issue of this ruling lies in the fact that it ignores the very real forces of systemic oppression, and the fight against it that was supposed to be aided by the temporary band-aid of affirmative action. In the ruling of Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Justice Sandra Day O’Conner expressed her wish that “25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”[8] It was never a system that was made to last, but now it’s gone too soon.

[1] Gramlich, John. “Americans and Affirmative Action: How the Public Sees the Consideration of Race in College  Admissions, Hiring.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 16 June 2023

[2] “Affirmative Action.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School

[3] “Executive Order 10925-Establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.” Executive Order 10925-Establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity | The American Presidency Project

[4] “Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” US EEOC

[5] “Affirmative Action.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School

[6] “Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.” Oyez

[7] “Stanford Scholars React to the End of Affirmative Action.” Stanford Report, 29 June 2023

[8] “Affirmative Action.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School