CORRECTION APPENDED

The Graduate School of Education hosted a packed audience last night for a panel on two Supreme Court cases about the constitutionality of using race in school assignments, set to be heard next week.

The court’s decision in the two cases—Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education—may overturn its landmark 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Before the crowd in Askwith Hall, civil rights advocate and public education author Jonathan Kozol ’58 spoke fervently against what he described as racial re-segregation in American schools.

“Whether you are speaking about small apartheid schools or big ones...no matter how it’s tricked out, I believe it is not only an injustice, but a moral evil and a cancer to our society,” said Kozol, who authored “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America.”

The Supreme Court’s Brown decision ruled that “separate but equal” is “inherently unequal” in an opinion that cited the psychological effects of racial segregation on children.

The social aftermath was mixed as some public schools carried out desegregation programs while others resisted.

In the two pending Supreme Court cases discussed by the panel, the defendants are public schools with voluntary integration policies.

In Seattle, Washington, ten high schools allowed students to opt for any school of choice, unless the school was over-enrolled. If that was the case, after preference was given to siblings of enrolled students, the spots were allotted to maintain a racial balance that differed by no more than 15 percent from the county’s overall demographics, according to one of the panelists, Liliana M. Garces, who wrote the amicus brief submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union for the two cases. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW.]

Jefferson County in Louisville, Kentucky, assigned students schools based on residence, but students could opt to transfer if space was available and the enrollment of the schools would remain between 15 and 50 percent African American, according to Garces.

In both cases, parents of white students denied enrollment in the schools of their choice due to racial balance policies sued the schools, according to case briefs.

The school systems’ policies in both cases were upheld by the lower courts, according to the Associated Press.

If the court adopts the standard used in the 2003 decision on the University of Michigan’s affirmative action programs, the schools will need to demonstrate a compelling reason for racial balance and prove that the practices are narrowly tailored, Garces said.

Another panelist suggested that the court decision may come down to a swing vote.

“The decision pretty much depends on Justice Kennedy, much like it relied on [Justice] O’Connor before” in the University of Michigan decision, said Gary Orfield, a Graduate School of Education (GSE) professor and director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard.

Kozol was outspoken in his criticism of the court, calling it “packed with sinister appointees of a reactionary president” and telling the audience “how devastating it is to see the clock turning back now.”

The GSE’s Student Coalition for Justice plans to march with a national rally in Washington D.C. next week during the hearings.

CORRECTION

Attorney Liliana M. Garces, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, filed a brief on behalf of 553 social scientists urging the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of two school districts' race-conscious student-assignment plans. The Nov. 29 article "GSE Hosts Panel on Racial Balance" incorrectly stated that she filed the brief on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, her former employer.