The country's leading colleges and universities state that mixing students from different backgrounds is integral to their mission.
Critics disagree about the value of diversity, particularly where race is involved.
Re arkably, given the academic character of the institutions and the debate's national importance, social science has barely addressed the question. In the key Supreme Court ruling of Regents of University of California v. Bakke ,decided in 1978, Justice Lewis Powell identified diversity as the one legitimate basis for using race as a positive factor in admissions. Nevertheless, since then most of academia has held the value of diversity as an article of faith. The rush was prompted by a 1996 federal court decision barring the use of race in public university admissions in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Many legal experts believe the Supreme Court itself will soon take up the question of affirmative action in admissions and that today's justices will expect hard evidence that diversity works.