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Page Number: 236.0

28  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
JACKSON, J., dissenting 

soundness of UNC’s holistic admissions approach existed), 
the Court indulges those who either do not know our Na-
tion’s history or long to repeat it.  Simply put, the race-blind
admissions  stance  the  Court  mandates  from  this  day  for-
ward  is  unmoored  from  critical  real-life  circumstances. 
Thus, the Court’s meddling not only arrests the noble gen-
erational  project  that  America’s  universities  are  attempt-
ing, it also launches, in effect, a dismally misinformed soci-
ological experiment.

Time  will  reveal  the  results.  Yet  the  Court’s  own  mis-
steps are now both eternally memorialized and excruciat-
ingly plain.  For one thing—based, apparently, on nothing 
more than Justice Powell’s initial say so—it drastically dis-
counts  the  primary  reason  that  the  racial-diversity  objec-
tives it excoriates are needed, consigning race-related his-
torical  happenings  to  the  Court’s  own  analytical  dustbin. 
Also, by latching onto arbitrary timelines and professing in-
security  about  missing  metrics,  the  Court  sidesteps  unre-
futed proof of the compelling benefits of holistic admissions 
programs that factor in race (hard to do, for there is plenty), 
simply proceeding as if no such evidence exists.  Then, ulti-
mately,  the  Court  surges  to  vindicate  equality,  but  Don 
Quixote  style—pitifully  perceiving  itself  as  the  sole  van-
guard of legal high ground when, in reality, its perspective
is not constitutionally compelled and will hamper the best
judgments of our world-class educational institutions about
who  they  need  to  bring  onto  their  campuses  right  now  to 
benefit every American, no matter their race.105 
—————— 

105 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR has fully explained why the majority’s analysis 
is legally erroneous and how UNC’s holistic review program is entirely 
consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment.  My goal here has been to
highlight the interests at stake and to show that holistic admissions pro-
grams that factor in race are warranted, just, and universally beneficial.
All told, the Court’s myopic misunderstanding of what the Constitution 
permits will impede what experts and evidence tell us is required (as a
matter of social science) to solve for pernicious race-based inequities that 
are themselves rooted in the persistent denial of equal protection.  “[T]he