{"id":1703,"date":"2020-04-06T20:20:50","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T00:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/glj-online\/108-online\/content-discriminatory-patents-a-response-to-professor-chiang-2\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:13:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:13:59","slug":"affirming-affirmative-action","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/submit\/glj-online\/108-online\/affirming-affirmative-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Affirming Affirmative Action by Affirming White Privilege: SFFA v. Harvard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Harvard College\u2019s race-based affirmative action measures for student admissions survived trial in a federal district court. Harvard\u2019s victory has since been characterized as \u201c[t]hrilling,\u201d yet \u201c[p]yrrhic.\u201d Although the court\u2019s reasoning should be lauded for its thorough assessment of Harvard\u2019s race-based affirmative action, the roads <em>not<\/em> taken by the court should be assessed just as thoroughly. For instance, NYU School of Law Professor Melissa Murray commented that, much like the Supreme Court\u2019s seminal decision in <em>Grutter v. Bollinger<\/em> (which involved the University of Michigan Law School), the district court\u2019s decision in <em>Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard<\/em>, by \u201cfocus[ing] on diversity as the sole grounds on which the use of race in admissions may be justified,\u201d avoided \u201cengag[ing] more deeply and directly with the question of whether affirmative action is now merely a tool to promote pluralism or remains an appropriate remedy for longtime systemic, state-sanctioned oppression.\u201d This Essay, however, criticizes the district court\u2019s assessment of Harvard\u2019s use of race-based affirmative action <em>at all<\/em>, given that the lawsuit\u2019s central claim had nothing to do with it. In a footnote, the court addresses the real claim at hand\u2014discrimination against Asian-American applicants vis-\u00e0-vis white applicants resulting from race-neutral components of the admissions program. Had the analysis in this footnote served as the central basis of the court\u2019s ruling, it could have both demonstrated how elite schools privilege whiteness, and also thwarted the possibility of the Supreme Court ending race-based affirmative action in higher education once and for all.<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2020\/04\/Shah_Affirming-Affirmative-Action_ADA.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" style=\"text-decoration:underline;\" class=\"cx_external_link\"><span class=\"cx_external_hyperlink\"><em>Affirming Affirmative Action by Affirming White Privilege: SFFA v. Harvard<\/em><\/span><span class=\"visually_hide\">(This link opens in a new tab)<\/span><span class=\"cx_external_icon\"><\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harvard College\u2019s race-based affirmative action measures for student admissions survived trial in a federal district court. Harvard\u2019s victory has since been characterized as \u201c[t]hrilling,\u201d yet \u201c[p]yrrhic.\u201d Although the court\u2019s reasoning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"parent":830,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1703","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5495,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1703\/revisions\/5495"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}