Yale stays loyal to affirmative action

Yale administrators are standing by the affirmative action policies that have greatly diversified the nation's schools since the 1960s, even as several states have made concrete steps towards ending affirmative action as we know it today.

In the wake of the decision by the University of California system to abandon its policy of race-based admissions and a strong judicial challenge to the University of Texas Law School's affirmative action policies, universities, corporations, and politicians are gearing up for a tough and potentially divisive battle over this sensitive issue.

Later this month, Yale will be the site of a national symposium on the future of affirmative action in America. The symposium, which will take place on Oct. 17-18, will be "an informed discussion of affirmative action, what we think of it and how we talk about it," according to a statement released by Peter Brooks, Tripp Professor of Humanities and acting director of the Whitney Humanities Center. Brooks, who is organizing the conference along with Yale Law School professor Paul Gewirtz, said such a discussion "seems imperative at the present moment."

Brooks and Gewirtz have called upon an impressive lineup of speakers to tackle the affirmative action issue. Participants will include New York Times columnists Anthony Lewis and Richard Bernstein, literary critic Stanley Fish of Duke University, former nominee for U.S. Attorney General and University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Lani Guinier, psychologist Jerome Bruner, and Clinton White House Domestic Policy Counsel William Galston, among others.

"This is a good moment to reflect on where we are--not only the important legal and policy questions, but also the language and rhetoric we use to discuss them," Gewirtz said in a statement promoting the event which will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center. While the symposium will give the Yale community an opportunity to reassess its opinions on affirmative action, the policy has remained popular among administrators and faculty over the years.

Graduate and undergraduate admissions offices across the country have been vague in their explanation of how important race and gender are in the admissions process. While the use of strict quotas does not generally take place anywhere, Yale actively recruits minority and women applicants to the University. In addition, admissions officers seek to create a matriculating class which is diverse in such areas as talent, geography, and academic interests. In doing so, the University has created a campus which is significantly more diverse than at any other time in Yale's history. According to Yale administrators, this situation will not change in the foreseeable future.

"We are not planning on changing anything" in the wake of the court challenge to the University of Texas Law School's affirmative action policies, Yale Law School Assistant Dean for Alumni and Public Affairs Toni Davis said.

Director of Undergraduate Admissions Margit Dahl confirmed that undergraduate admissions will not be affected by recent national trends reversing affirmative action. "We don't anticipate changes in the way we do business at this time," she said. The reason for this is that the U.S. Supreme Court did not hear the appeal in the University of Texas case and judicial decisions heard on the local level will only affect specific states, according to Dahl. "Whether that changes in the future depends on whether any cases [challenging affirmative action] make it to the Supreme Court," she said.

Yale constitutional scholar and political science professor Rogers Smith noted that federal decisions on affirmative action could also affect private universities, such as Yale, because they rely on federal grants to conduct a substantial part of their business. Smith added that the executive orders which have supported affirmative action since the days of President Johnson made federal grants conditional on achieving racial diversity. A judicial decision against affirmative action "wouldn't necessarily ban affirmative action," but could influence universities by making federal funding contingent on their compliance with new federal rulings, he said.

While student activism against the abolition of affirmative action has been vocal and highly emotional on University of California campuses in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Berkeley, debate over affirmative action has largely been quiet and calm at Yale. This may be a direct result of the strong support the University has given the policies and the subsequent improbability that the policies they espouse will be changed anytime soon.

Echoing the opinions of administrators throughout the Yale bureaucracy, Assistant Dean Mary Li Hsu, Director of the Asian-American Cultural Center, said "If you ask me as an individual, I am strongly in favor of affirmative action." With the strong level of support of affirmative action in the administration, the judicial route may the only one available to opponents of the policies at Yale.