The recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College" (2023) and "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina et al." (2023), hereafter collectively referred to as "SFFA v. Harvard," have garnered attention, especially among…

In its 2023 decision in "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard," the Supreme Court effectively ended its approval of affirmative action in higher education admissions, holding that practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) were unlawful. The Court concluded that UNC's practices violated the guarantee of equal…

Racisms are plural, taking different forms in different countries, subject to change in focus and intensity over time. Colonialism and slavery influence attitudes and policies in both countries through to modern times. In examining the British and American contexts, one needs to particularise by (a) country, (b) ethnicities, (c) histories, (d)…

In "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College ("SFFA")," the United States Supreme Court revisited an issue that had been litigated before it twenty years earlier. In two separate cases brought against the University of Michigan, the issue was whether it was a violation of the Constitution…

This essay examines the significance of the fortuitous Fisher v. University of Texas Supreme Court decision within a broader historical framework of similar affirmative action legal disputes. The author locates Fisher among a historical trajectory of manoeuvres intended to destabilise modest Civil Rights Era advances toward racial justice.…

The purpose of this historical examination is to first understand the context of United States affirmative action legislation and its importance. It provides a spotlight on Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) during the civil rights movement and what led to the creation of policies that would forever impact the institutional makeup of IUB.…

The last several years have seen renewed debate over the role that race plays in higher education--a debate over "affirmative action." The report first considers "affirmative action" in its original sense: the "mandatory" race-conscious measures that the federal courts have imposed on "de jure" segregated…

As the federal entity in charge of enforcing civil rights law, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) plays a critical role in addressing the vast inequities that exist in U.S. education. Through an analysis of the policy guidance OCR issued for a number of areas during the Obama administration, we illustrate the agency's…

The racial diversification of America's higher education system has been at the forefront of legal argument for the last seventy-five years. Ground-breaking decisions birthed the inclusion of affirmative action policies in higher education after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In recent years, both the utility and constitutionality…

In this article we extend Bell's work on interest convergence by using Harris' work on whiteness as property to articulate a cycle of interest convergence, interest divergence, and imperialistic reclamation, or convergence-divergence-reclamation (C-D-R, pronounced "cedar"). We then apply the C-D-R cycle lens to the evolution of federal…

The "Bakke" decision marked a turning point in higher education. Tested again most recently in "Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin," affirmative action policy remains in place even as the Roberts Court shakes its foundation by demanding a degree of administrative oversight not pursued by previous Courts. In spite of…

Justice Goodwin Liu reexamined seminal affirmative action in higher education legal cases beginning with the landmark 1978 case, "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke" and leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in "Gratz v. Bollinger." Liu argued that the "Bakke and Gratz" lawsuits were…

More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would…

Affirmative action (AA) is one of the most suitable mechanisms to promote equity and social justice in education in India. This essay deals with the impact of the different conceptualizations of AA in terms of its vision and the historic approaches to social inequalities in India. Primarily focusing on the various perspectives of affirmative…

The purpose of this study was to discover the perceptions of Florida law school administrators on the impact of the OFI (one Florida initiative) and the addition of two MSI (minority serving institution) law schools on diversity in Florida's legal profession. This research explored the impact of Governor Bush's EO (executive order) on diversity…