Harvard Backs Michigan Policy

As the Supreme Court readies to hear oral arguments tomorrow in a landmark affirmative action case, Harvard is voicing its support for the race-conscious admissions—from the highest level of the administration down to the grassroots.

University President Lawrence H. Summers wrote a New York Times op-ed Saturday and two buses of students plan to travel to D.C. today to defend admissions policies at the University of Michigan and beyond.

Summers, along with Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe, argued for the educational benefits of diversity and against the Bush administration’s opposing position in the pair of cases before the Supreme Court.

Summers has spoken out in support of affirmative action in the past, but never before from such a high profile platform.

Tribe, an expert in constitutional law, was one of the main drafters of Harvard’s friend-of-the-court brief, co-signed by seven other universities, which argued that the Supreme Court should find constitutional both the University of Michigan’s law school and undergraduate race-conscious admissions policies.

Tribe and Summers’ op-ed largely paralleled the brief, which Harvard filed mid-February.

The article did go beyond the brief in one significant respect, explicitly rejecting opponents’ characterization of Michigan’s policies as quotas.

“Setting aside a fixed number of ‘slots’ for which racial minorities are eligible would be a forbidden racial quota,” Summers and Tribe wrote in the op-ed. “But that epithet does not fairly describe Michigan’s policies...”

The amicus brief focused mainly on the particulars of Harvard’s undergraduate admissions policy, and did not deal in depth with Michigan.

Summers and Tribe also argued that Bush’s preferred “race-neutral” alternative to Michigan’s undergraduate policy—guaranteeing admission to the top ten percent of high school graduates—was flawed.

Neither could not be reached for comment this weekend.

While Summers and Tribe expressed their views in print, Harvard graduate students were finalizing plans for on-the-ground action.

The students have organized two buses to bring nearly 70 people to Washington, D.C. early tomorrow morning, in time to rally outside the hearing.

Alejandro Yepes, a student at the Kennedy School of Government who helped arrange the bus trip, said that some of the students are hoping to be able to enter the Supreme Court to listen to tomorrow’s oral arguments.

According to Yepes, an umbrella group called the African, Latino, Asian and Native American Council, is overseeing the trip.

Michelle F. Blair, another student-organizer from the Kennedy School, said that those registered for the bus are primarily graduate students who recognize the gravity of the issue under debate.

“I think the impact this Supreme Court case could have is profound. We’re going to go down there and make it known,” Blair said.

The students will depart Cambridge at 3:30 p.m. and, after a ten hour drive, sleep at sites provided by volunteers, Yepes said.

They will meet tomorrow morning to rally outside of the Supreme Court while the oral arguments take place, and then participate in a national march from the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial around noon.

The Black Students’ Union at MIT has also arranged three buses to travel to D.C. this afternoon, according to one of the organizers, Kasetta V. Coleman. As of yesterday, eight Harvard students were registered to ride on the MIT buses, Coleman said.

At 10 a.m. tomorrow, the Court will hear arguments in the cases of Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court traditionally last one-hour per case.

Michigan’s undergraduate admissions decisions are based on a point system, in which minority students are given a 20 point boost. The law school’s policy more closely resembles that of Harvard College, which says only that race is considered as a factor in admissions.

Twenty-five years ago—the last time the Supreme Court heard a case involving affirmative action in higher education—Harvard’s admissions policy was cited as a model.

In that case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court prohibited the use of quotas in admissions but upheld some forms of affirmative action.

That ruling is said to be in jeopardy in the current cases.

Summers and Tribe wrote in their op-ed that the result of the Bakke decision has become “deeply woven in the fabric of our society.”

—Staff writer Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.