NYU McSilver released the following statement in response to the June 23, 2023 ruling on Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, from our Executive Director Rose Pierre-Louis:
Today the U.S. Supreme Court has shattered the foundation of racial and ethnic equity in America’s higher education system. Flipping the hallowed decision of Brown v. Board of Education on its head, the Court’s majority have foreclosed the ability for colleges and universities to ensure a level playing field among applicants from all backgrounds.
Built up over decades, affirmative action has worked. It has brought much-needed diversity of views, experiences, and backgrounds to college campuses, and helped them to more accurately reflect our country as a whole. And it has provided individuals and families from historically marginalized and under-resourced communities with an opportunity to share in the bounty of this country.
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the opinion of the majority, “subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”
In spite of this immoral ruling, we will continue to work tirelessly within and on the behalf of the very communities left reeling today, in the knowledge that this is an issue far from settled.
Find more coverage and additional context at The New York Times.