Affirmative Action for the Future

Preface

Preface In 2003, I wrote a debate book on affirmative action with Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan. Cohen, a long time critic of affirmative action, had used the Freedom of Information Act to secure data about Michigan’s affirmative action programs. He then gave this data to the Center for Individual Rights, which brought the lawsuits against the University of Michigan . This led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, decisions that vindicated the Law School’s affirmative action program but struck down the program used for undergraduates at the University. I found writing the book with Cohen to be a wonderful exercise in public deliberation. We each wrote long essays defending our respective views. We then wrote detailed replies to each other’s essays. I came away from this exercise seeing considerable common ground between our views. As I saw it, we each held the same individual-based view of remedial affirmative action, although we applied our shared view differently. Where we really differed was with respect to our assessment of nonremedial diversity x Preface affirmative action. Cohen maintained that there were still more fundamental disagreements, but he only reached that conclusion by interpreting my view in ways I have publicly repudiated, and for which, even after repeated requests, he has been able to provide no textual support. In 2006, my debate with Cohen and other critics of affirmative action, such as William Allen of Michigan State University and past chair of the U.S.Civil Rights Commission, entered anew phasewhentheMichiganCivil Rights Initiative (MCRI)—a referendum that would rule out any race- and sex-based affirmative action—was being discussed across the state. In debates in which I participated, Cohen and Allen repeatedly argued that the passage of MCRI would not have negative impact on women or minorities in Michigan. Now that MCRI has passed, and although its full impact has yet to be assessed, undergraduate black enrollment at the University of Michigan is down 22 percent from 2003. In light of these developments, I think a new defense of affirmative action is needed. I also think it is important to document the level of racial and sexual discrimination that exists in the United States and to offer a defense of an expanded diversity affirmative action program. Such a program would include more preferences for economically disadvantaged applicants by cutting back on legacy and athletic preferences, which now bene fit wealthy white applicants to elite colleges and universities. Affirmative Action for the Future is my attempt to provide just this sort of a defense. Many people have assisted me in writing this book. In particular, I thank Carol Allen, William Allen, Elizabeth Anderson, Monica Bloomer, Carl Cohen, Kristen Eliason, Neil Gotanda, Cheryl Harris, Jill Havey, Stephen Kershnar, Janet Kourany, Bob Laird, Daniel Lipson, Michelle MoodyAdams , Camila Morsch, Mark Nadel, Martha Nussbaum, David Oppenheimer , Marie-Christine Panwels, Paule Cruz Takash, John William Templeton, Laurence Thomas, Richard Sander, Sonya Kourany Sterba, Thomas Weisskopf, Christopher Westhoff, Celia Wolf-Devine, and Levon Yuille. I also thank Oxford University Press for permission to draw material from Affirmative Action and Racial Preference (2003) and Stanford University Press for permission to draw material from “Completing Thomas Sowell’s Study of Affirmative Action and Then Drawing Different Conclusions ,” Stanford Law Review, vol. 57, no. 2 (November 2004). I am also grateful to Roger Haydon at Cornell University Press who believed in this project from the beginning and kept after me to complete it. Affirmative Action for the Future This page intentionally left blank. ...