IN THE NAME OF “DIVERSITY? : The Supreme Court today hears oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, another affirmative action case. At issue: Whether a public university can supplement a race-neutral admissions program (taking the top 10% of high school graduates) with a race-conscious one, when the race-neutral program already yields minority enrollment of over 50 percent? In other words, is it consonant with the concept of “equal protection” to have a race-conscious policy in the name of achieving “diversity,” when diversity is already clearly achieved? As the editors of the Wall Street Journal put it,
By 2010, more than half of all UT students were one ethnic minority or another—yet the school continues to claim that it must discriminate on the basis of race to achieve diversity and “critical mass.” How can a minority feel “isolated,” according to the Grutter standard, if half of the student body is minority?
Good question.