The Supreme Court of the United States has just issued its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina, two cases bearing on the legality of race-conscious college admissions programs. Overturning comprehensive and exhaustive trial court decisions that found that both universities had complied with the Supreme Court precedent of permitting the consideration of race as one factor among many in evaluating an individual’s application for admission, the opinions are complex and will be dissected ad nauseum over the coming weeks.
Although brought within the framework of college admission practices, the cases are widely seen as heralding broader restrictions on the use of race as a factor in other forms of organizational and institutional decision-making – in hiring and promoting workers, making grants, entering into contracts, and potentially a great deal more. These are issues we all have reason to be concerned about – whether in the form of confusion, anger, anxiety, or otherwise.
There is already a chorus of voices calling attention to the alleged flaws in the majority’s legal analysis. From the Legal Defense Fund to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the Law, from constitutional scholars to distinguished members of the bar, from the halls of Congress to the administrative machinery of colleges and universities, there will be no lack of grist for intellectual, political, and legal critique. I don’t propose to add to that here.
In all the sturm and drang, however, it is important to keep front of mind that interpretation and implementation of this new law of the land will take a long time – a very long time. Some of the effects may become apparent more quickly than others. But there is time and opportunity to reflect, deliberate, and act. Nobody, philanthropy included, should jump to conclusions about making major changes in how they work.
In that vein, there may emerge a temptation for philanthropy to anticipate political pressure or legal challenge by tempering its activities. Kresge will not engage in anticipatory self-censorship. We will instead assume that our behaviors are just and prudent until the point and time when we have been authoritatively disabused of that belief.
My intention is not to criticize the Court, but instead to remind us all that the mission of Kresge remains unequivocal and inviolate: to create the essential building blocks of opportunity and equity in American cities. We will not waver from that call.
Our nation’s recent history has entailed painful, arduous, exhausting, and recurring struggles to overcome the pervasive and obdurate structural barriers to advancing equity, opportunity, and justice for people of color and other marginalized communities. We have chosen to dedicate every ounce of our institutional equity to joining that struggle. That will not change.
So, tomorrow we resume our work with the same passion, commitment, skill, and resolve that has characterized our work for decades. We are in service to others. And they need more than ever our best thinking, our deepest engagement, our full resources, and our hearts. They will have it.
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