Where Have You Gone Rita Greenwald Clancy? Gail Heriot

Well, I suppose this is a somewhat unconventional way to do research, but here goes…

I’m writing an essay about UC Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), the old Supreme Court case on race-based admissions policies.   Allen Bakke was a household name during the late 1970s.  Crowds waited in line all night outside the Supreme Court building just to hear the oral arguments.

Bakke’s center stage position, however, was just a simple twist of fate.  He was not the first person to challenge racially discriminatory affirmative action in higher education.  There were several cases, filed a few years before and a few years after his.  His was simply the one that the Supreme Court decided to address on the merits.

Rita Greenwald Clancy was another case.  She also brought an action against the UC Davis Medical School in the California Superior Court for Yolo County.  But unlike Bakke’s case, hers never reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and her role in the controversy has been virtually forgotten today.

It’s a pity that it’s been forgotten, since her life story has some bearing on the “diversity” rationale used by the UC to defend its policies.  (The Bakke Court had no majority opinion, but all the UC’s proffered reasons were soundly rejected by a majority of the Court, except arguably the diversity rationale, which captured the imagination of Justice Powell, the court’s swing vote.) 

Mrs. Clancy was the Russian-born daughter of concentration camp survivors.  She came to America at the age of fourteen, speaking only Russian and Hungarian.  Shortly after her arrival, her father, a bookkeeper, became seriously ill, and the family was forced to live on welfare.  Clancy, however, was undeterred.  Soon she had taught herself English by watching television and reading Nancy Drew mysteries.  Within a few years, she graduated from UCLA, where she had excelled in her studies.  When she learned that she had been denied a seat at UC Davis Medical School because she was white, she quietly sought and obtained a court order to admit her.

Rather than appeal the Clancy ruling, the UC apparently gave in (or at least that’s what the information I have so far suggests).  University attorneys evidently preferred Bakke as their adversary in their test case, and it’s easy to see why.  Bakke was the son of a mail carrier and a school teacher–hardly a child of privilege, but not a child of dire hardship either.  On the other hand, Clancy and her parents had overcome adversity of a kind that Americans of any race rarely encounter.  No attorney would want to argue that Clancy had lead a more privileged life than the beneficiaries of UC Davis Medical School’s affirmative action program or that Clancy’ s experiences would not contribute as much to the class’s diversity.  Such an argument would make them look foolish.

I can’t find any record of Rita Greenwald Clancy after the court order.  I don’t know if she completed medical school or what happened to her.  If anyone does know, I’d appreciate hearing.