Giving Up the Bad Faith of Affirmative Action
One of the more interesting footnotes to the Students for Fair Admissions case doesn t involve what happened. It involves what didn t happen. After the decision came down, liberals and the left voiced their dismay at the result. There was a little organized protesting, but it was nothing compared to the massive waves of mobilization that attended the Dobbs decision on abortion, despite the fact that the result was predictable in both cases.
Perhaps that s to be expected. Dobbs is, in my view, the more consequential decision. It has the potential to directly affect far more people than Students for Fair Admissions. But I think there is another factor at play. Most people already suspected what the latter case demonstrated that race-based affirmative action is a discriminatory practice. It was both unjust and unpopular, and now it s been declared unconstitutional. The relatively muted response from some of the left could signal a tacit decision to relinquish the legerdemain and enforced silence and bad faith necessary to keep the policy going. I can t help but think that, whatever attitude they present to the public, some affirmative action defenders are secretly relieved that they can now turn their attention elsewhere.
Of course, I m only speculating. And the fight over racial preferences in college admissions is not nearly over. It s too big a business to simply vanish; elite institutions have invested too much in it to just give it up. This week s episode features Duke economist Peter Arcidiacono, the man who led the herculean effort to analyze the data that made Students for Fair Admissions case. As Peter says, that data is clear. Now that it s out in the open, any of the good liberals who defended affirmative action as a matter of principle while privately harboring doubts as to its logical and moral coherence have an offramp. They can let it go. The questions is, will they?