Burning Down the House: Politics, Governance, and Affirmative Action at the University of California

1. Burning Down the House: The Politics of Higher Education Policy

1 Burning Down the House: The Politics of Higher Education Policy There is a story that blacksmiths tell. It seems that when the pioneers headed west from the territories, as they left a settlement behind, their final act was to set fire to their homes. When the blaze had cooled, the pioneers would sift through the ashes, and collect the nails to begin again. INTRODUCTION On July 20, 1995, in the culmination of twelve months of rising organizational and political economic conflict, the University of California (UC) Board of Regents voted 14–10 to end race and gender preferences in university admissions, and 15–10 to do so for employment and contracting.1 The votes, having been delayed by a bomb threat, were taken at the end of more than twelve hours of deliberation. The Regents’ votes on proposals SP-1 and SP-2 marked a historic reversal of nearly thirty years of UC affirmative action efforts, and made UC the first public university in America to eliminate the use of race and gender in admissions and employment. The Regents’ actions were all the more remarkable coming from a university that, as the defendant in the landmark 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case UC Regents v. Bakke, had done much to preserve and codify existing national affirmative action policies in higher education. The fall of affirmative action at UC challenged a number of prevalent understandings of the nature of policymaking and governance in higher education . An impressive array of institutional factions had urged the Regents to preserve UC’s existing policies on affirmative action. Supporters included the president of the system, the university provost, all nine chancellors, representatives of the nine campus academic senates, representatives of all nine UC student associations, representatives of the system’s major staff organizations, representatives of the university alumni association, and the faculty representatives to the Board of Regents. 1 2 Burning Down the House There was also considerable support for UC’s affirmative action policies beyond the campus borders. The Clinton White House and its Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, showed considerable support, as did the California State Senate and Assembly Democratic caucuses and a number of elected state officials. They were joined by a significant cohort of organizations devoted to an end to discrimination and the redress of historical economic and social inequalities in America. The Reverend Jesse Jackson representing the Rainbow Coalition, the Reverend Cecil Williams and other church leaders, the NAACP, MALDEF, the ACLU, national student organizations, labor organizations including UPTE and AAUW, and such activist community organizations as the Grey Panthers all came to the defense of affirmative action at UC. Through a number of social and political actions, these groups worked to resist the effort to end affirmative action, and to link the struggle at UC to a broader struggle over access and equality. Powerful forces were also arrayed in pursuit of an end to affirmative action at UC, including California Governor Pete Wilson, the State Assembly and Senate Republican caucuses, several candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, and a number of conservative legal foundations and interest groups. Despite nearly a year of public deliberation, a barrage of state and national attention directed at the Regents’ deliberations, and the active involvement of the university’s administrative leadership in the contest, the outcome came as a profound shock to institutional leaders at UC and across the country.2 That many in academe were surprised by the outcome of the affirmative action policy contest at UC points to the lack of theoretical and empirical work on contemporary university policymaking in a rapidly shifting political and economic context. Scholars of higher education have rarely addressed the role of public and private universities in broader state and national political contests, nor have they generally linked research on university policies to broader questions of race, gender, and power in the academy. As public universities increasingly become sites of contest over the allocation of scarce public resources, it is imperative to understand the uses of the university as an instrument in broader political contests, and the role of the State in the provision of public higher education.3 Intensified global economic competition has led to demands for increased contributions from higher education to state and federal economic development, and has also heightened the competition for access to both the most prestigious institutions and their most prestigious disciplines. At the same time, institutions...