Policy Practicum: "What's Next? After Students for Fair Admissions"

Catalog description

Policy Client: Stanford Center for Racial Justice, https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-center-for-racial-justice/. The Supreme Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions has upended nearly a half century of precedent. Universities that had long relied on race-based affirmative action in their admissions policies will no longer be permitted to do so. This policy lab will take up the question with which universities across the country must now grapple: What next? The orientation of the lab will be forward-looking and inclined toward innovation. New principles. New goals. New ideas. Rather than merely try to accomplish indirectly what the Supreme Court has prohibited universities from doing overtly, the practicum aims to treat the Supreme Court's prohibition of race-based affirmative action as an opportunity to reconsider more broadly the goals of selective college admissions and the ways in which America's leading educational institutions may reform admissions and associated practices in order to improve higher education broadly. Advanced education is crucially important both to national well-being and to racial justice. There is no path to racial justice that does not entail an educational system that works better for people of all backgrounds. The recent Supreme Court decisions regarding race preferences in admissions, and also student loan forgiveness, create an uncommon opportunity to fairly radically rethink how universities make good on their implicit bargain with the American people: to receive public patronage in exchange for enhancing educational opportunity and social mobility. Two understandings of the issues inform the scope of work. One is that race-based affirmative action is far from the only aspect of university activity that has been or will be subject to criticism. Thus, we will not limit our focus to the one practice the Supreme Court has already…