Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
This June, when the Supreme Court overturned the affirmative-action admissions programs of Harvard and the University of North Carolina, it left open a crack in the door for colleges and universities that wanted to respond.
The Court pointed out that there were limits to its decision. Writing for the Court’s 6-3 majority, Chief Justice John Roberts observed that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
Now the small liberal arts college at which I teach has taken Roberts at his word.