The Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era guidance that encouraged schools to take a student\u2019s race into account to promote diversity in admissions. The shift suggests schools will have the federal government\u2019s blessing to leave race out of admissions and enrollment decisions, and it underscores the contentious politics that continue to surround affirmative action policies, which have repeatedly been challenged before the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
The admissions memos were among 24 policy documents revoked by the Justice Department yesterday for being \u201cunnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper.\u201d Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the changes an effort to restore the \u201crule of law\u201d and blamed past administrations for imposing new rules without seeking public comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s wrong, and it\u2019s not good government,\u201d Sessions said in a statement. The action comes amid a high-profile court fight over Harvard University admissions as well as Supreme Court turnover expected to produce a more critical eye toward schools\u2019 race-conscious admissions policies.<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s most recent significant ruling on the subject bolstered colleges\u2019 use of race among many factors in the admission process. But the opinion\u2019s author, Anthony Kennedy, announced his retirement last week, giving President Donald Trump a chance to replace him with a justice who may be more reliably skeptical of admissions programs that take race and ethnicity into account.<\/p>\n
The new policy dramatically departs from the stance of the Obama administration, which in a 2011 policy document said courts had recognized schools\u2019 \u201ccompelling interest\u201d in ensuring racially diverse populations.<\/p>\n
The guidance said that while race shouldn\u2019t be the primary factor in an admission decision, schools could lawfully consider it in the interest of achieving diversity. \u201cInstitutions are not required to implement race-neutral approaches if, in their judgment, the approaches would be unworkable,\u201d the guidance said. \u201cIn some cases, race-neutral approaches will be unworkable because they will be ineffective to achieve the diversity the institution seeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
That guidance has now been rescinded, as have more than a half-dozen other similar documents, including some that sought to explain court rulings affirming the use of race as one of several factors in the admissions process.<\/p>\n
In one such document, the Obama administration stated, \u201cAs the Supreme Court has recognized, diversity has benefits for all students, and today\u2019s students must be prepared to succeed in a diverse society and an increasingly global workforce.\u201d The Trump administration\u2019s announcement is more in line with Bush-era policy that discouraged affirmative action and instead encouraged the use of race-neutral alternatives, like percentage plans and economic diversity programs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era guidance that encouraged schools to take a student\u2019s race into account to promote diversity in admissions. The shift suggests schools will have the federal government\u2019s blessing to leave race out of admissions and enrollment decisions, and it underscores the contentious politics that continue to surround affirmative action policies, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36048"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36050,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36048\/revisions\/36050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}