In the era of Donald Trump, many liberals understandably look back with fondness at the time when Republican moderates recognized that racial diversity strengthens institutions.
Such nostalgia can include favorable feelings for three Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices who, over the course of nearly four decades, provided the crucial swing votes to sustain racial affirmative action in higher education. Nixon appointee Lewis F. Powell Jr. did so in the 1978 Bakke decision. Reagan appointee Sandra Day O’Connor did so in the 2003 Grutter ruling. And another Reagan appointee, Anthony Kennedy, did so in the 2016 Fisher case.
But what if that view is wrong? Looking back today, after the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which struck down racial preferences, a very different picture emerges. Many (though not all) colleges have managed to preserve previous levels of racial diversity by adopting new programs to admit more low-income and working-class students of all races.
In light of this emerging evidence, the efforts of moderate Republican-appointed justices to fortify racial preferences takes on a different light. After all, the old admissions regime tended to benefit well-off Black and Hispanic students, and it provided political cover for a larger system of preferences for the mostly white children of alumni, donors, and faculty that is now coming under attack. What if the Republican moderates weren’t so much champions of racial justice as economic elitists who fulfilled the worst stereotypes of Republicans from that era?
