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28  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
THOMAS, J., concurring 

shown that purportedly benign discrimination may be per-
nicious, and discriminators may go to great lengths to hide 
and perpetuate their unlawful conduct.  Take, for example, 
the  university  respondents  here.    Harvard’s  “holistic”  ad-
missions policy began in the 1920s when it was developed 
to exclude Jews.  See M. Synnott, The Half-Opened Door: 
Discrimination  and  Admission  at  Harvard,  Yale,  and 
Princeton,  1900–1970,  pp. 58–59,  61,  69,  73–74  (2010). 
Based  on  de  facto  quotas  that  Harvard  quietly  imple-
mented, the proportion of Jews in Harvard’s freshman class 
declined from 28% as late as 1925 to just 12% by 1933.  J. 
Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and 
Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton 172 (2005).  Dur-
ing this same period, Harvard played a prominent role in
the  eugenics  movement.  According  to  then-President  Ab-
bott Lawrence Lowell, excluding Jews from Harvard would 
help  maintain  admissions  opportunities  for  Gentiles  and
perpetuate the purity of the Brahmin race—New England’s
white, Protestant upper crust.  See D. Okrent, The Guarded 
Gate 309, and n. * (2019).

UNC also has a checkered history, dating back to its time
as a segregated university.  It admitted its first black un-
dergraduate students in 1955—but only after being ordered 
to  do  so  by  a  court,  following  a  long  legal  battle  in  which
UNC sought to keep its segregated status.  Even then, UNC 
did not turn on a dime: The first three black students ad-
mitted as undergraduates enrolled at UNC but ultimately
earned their bachelor’s degrees elsewhere.  See M. Beaure-
gard,  Column:  The  Desegregation  of  UNC,  The  Daily  Tar 
Heel, Feb. 16, 2022.  To the extent past is prologue, the uni-
versity  respondents’  histories  hardly  recommend  them  as 
trustworthy  arbiters  of  whether  racial  discrimination  is 
necessary to achieve educational goals.

Of course, none of this should matter in any event; courts
have an independent duty to interpret and uphold the Con-
stitution that no university’s claimed interest may override.