Local Higher Ed Officials React to Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Massachusetts officials were quick to react Thursday to a pair of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that dealt a blow to generations of efforts to achieve equity in higher education through affirmative action efforts.
In a 6-2 decision, with Justice Keganji Brown Jackson recusing, the court struck down the affirmative action program at Harvard University. And in a 6-3 decision, the court similarly ruled against a program at the University of North Carolina.
Williams College President Maud Mandel quickly announced that the decisions will not change the college's "core values" of diversity, inclusion and access.
"We especially want to reassert Williams' commitment to racial diversity, given that race was the central issue in both cases," Mandel wrote in a letter to the college community. "We are committed to modifying our processes as necessary to continue seeking and supporting a diverse, vibrant and exceptional learning community within the new legal context."
Mandel referred to Chief Justice John Roberts' decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which covered both cases, as "complex and … accompanied by concurrences and dissents." The Williams president said the decision will take time to analyze and assess for its full implications.
Mandel also co-signed on a statement released Thursday morning by Gov. Maura Healey addressing the court's decision.
"We will continue to break down barriers to higher education so that all students see themselves represented in both our public and private campus communities," Healey wrote. "Massachusetts, the home of the first public school and first university, will lead the way in championing access, equity, and inclusion in education.
"We want to make sure that students of color, LGBTQ+ students, first generation students, and all students historically underrepresented in higher education feel welcomed and valued at our colleges and universities. Today's decision, while disappointing, will not change our commitment to these students."
Berkshire County Community College President Ellen Kennedy and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts President James Birge also signed on to Healey's statement, as did the commissioner of the Department of Higher Education, the president of the Massachusetts Senate and the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. MCLA's former president, Mary Grant, now president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design, is also a signatory.
Jackson recused herself from the Harvard decision because of her work on the school's board of overseers but authored a dissenting opinion in the UNC case.
"With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces 'colorblindness for all' by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life," she wrote. "And having so detached itself from this country's actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America's real-world problems.
"No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal racelinked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today's ruling makes things worse, not better."
Mandel's message to the Williams College community was signed jointly by the chair of the school's board of trustees and ends with a promise to find new ways to continue to strive for diversity.
"Williams is a remarkable intellectual community in which we see excellence and diversity as fundamentally connected," Mandel wrote. "Although today's decision has closed off certain established paths toward that vision, especially in regards to race, we will work within the new bounds of law to ensure that the promise of a great liberal arts education remains open to people of all identities, backgrounds and perspectives."
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