I’ve spent my career as a center-left thinker and writer, working with people like former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to help promote school integration and Keith Ellison and the late John Lewis to strengthen organized labor. So why did I agree to join a conservative group, Students for Fair Admissions, in its lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina in cases that enabled the Supreme Court to bring an end to racial preferences in 2023?
As I outline in my new book, Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, I testified as an expert witness that racial and economic diversity benefits students, but there is a much better way to accomplish these goals than through racial preferences.
Universities, I testified, should consider ending preferences for the wealthy and instead give an admissions break to economically disadvantaged students of all races, a substantial share of whom would, in fact, end up being Black and Hispanic.
I’d long argued that this approach could work, but I became even more convinced once I had a chance to peek inside the files at Harvard and UNC and see how the admissions process worked.
