Out of the controversy, several proposals have emerged to eliminate factors such as race, ethnicity, and gender from consideration in the admissions process. The University of California system, at the direction of its Board of Regents, is scheduled to implement such changes soon. A few weeks ago, in Hopwood v. State of Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the University of Texas may not consider race as a factor in its law-school admissions, despite the university's assertion of a compelling interest in fostering student diversity. Students benefit in countless ways from the opportunity to live and learn among peers whose perspectives and experiences differ from their own. Such an environment also creates opportunities for people from different backgrounds, with different life experiences, to come to know one another as more than passing acquaintances, and to develop forms of tolerance and mutual respect on which the health of our civic life depends.
Some historical context can be helpful in our present situation.
The deliberate, conscious effort to achieve greater Some historical context can be helpful in our present situation. The deliberate, conscious effort to achieve greater student diversity on our campuses was not born in the 1960s, as some might believe. It did not originate with formal programs of affirmative action. It reaches back at least a century earlier, to a time when issues of racial, ethnic, and other forms of diversity were no less volatile in American life than they are today. I discussed some of this history in a recent report to Harvard's Board of Overseers.