Arguing Affirmative action

                                                  PROMOTING DIVERSITY

   The diversity argument for affirmative action does not depend on controversial notions of collective responsibility. Nor does it depend on showing that the minority student given preference in admission has personally suffered discrimination or disadvantage. It treats admission less as a reward to the recipient than as a means of advancing a socially worthy aim. 
   The diversity rationale is an argument in the name of the common good---the common good of the school itself and also of the wider society. First, it holds that a racially mixed student body is desirable  because it enables students to learn more from one another than they would if all of them came from similar backgrounds. Just as a student body drawn from one part of the country would limit the range of intellectual and cultural perspectives, so would one that reflected homogeneity of race, ethnicity, and class. Second, the diversity argument maintains that equipping disadvantaged minorities to assume positions of leadership in key public and professional roles advances the university's civic purpose and contributes to the common good.
   The diversity argument is the one most frequently advanced by colleges and universities. When faced with Hopwood's challenge,the dean of the University of Texas Law School cited the civic purpose served by his school's affirmative action policy. Part of the law school's mission was to help increase the diversity of the Texas legal profession and to enable African Americans and Hispanics to assume leadership roles in government and law. By this measure, he said, the law school's affirmative action program was a success :"We see minority graduates of ours as elected officials, working in the prominent law firms, as members of the Texas legislature and the federal bench. To the extent that there are minorities in important offices in Texas, they are often our graduates."

   When the U.S. Supreme Court heard the Bakke case, Harvard College submitted a friend-of-the-court brief defending affirmative action on educational grounds.  It stated that grades and test scores had never been the only standard of admission. :If scholarly excellence were the sole or even predominant criterion, Harvard College would lose a great deal of its vitality and intellectual excellence. . . The quality of the educational experience offered to all students would suffer." In the past, diversity had meant students from California, New York, and Massachusetts ; city dwellers and farm boys ; violinists, painters, and football players; biologists, historians and classicists; potential stock brokers, academics and politicians. " Now, the college also cared about racial and ethnic diversity.

     A farm boy can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white student cannot offer. The quality of the educational experience of all the students in Harvard College depends in part on these differences in the background and outlook that students bring with them.

   Critics of the diversity argument offer two kinds of objection --- one practical, the other principled. The practical objection questions the effectiveness of affirmative action policies. It argues that the use of racial preferences will not bring about a more pluralistic society or reduce prejudice and inequalities but will damage the self-esteem of minority students, increase racial consciousness on all sides, heighten racial tensions, and provoke resentment among white ethnic groups who feel they, too, should get a break. The practical objection does not claim that affirmative action is unjust, but rather that it is unlikely to achieve its aims, and may do more harm than good. 

                   Do Racial Preferences Violate Rights ? 

   The principled objection claims that, however worthy the goal of a more diverse classroom or a more equal society, and however successful affirmative action policies may be in achieving it, using race or other ethnicity as a factor in admissions is unfair. The reason : doing so violates the rights of applicants such as Cheryl Hopwood, who, through no fault of their own, are put at a competitive disadvantage.
   For a utilitarian, this objection would not carry much weight. The case for affirmative action would simply depend on weighing the educational and civic benefits it produces against the disappointment it causes Hopwood and other white applicants at the margin who lose out. But many proponents of affirmative action are not utilitarians ; they are Kantian or Rawlsian liberals who believe that even desirable ends must not override individual rights. For them, if using race as a factor in admissions violates Hopwood's rights, then doing so is unjust. 
   Ronald Dworkin, a rights-oriented legal philosopher, addresses this objection by arguing that the use of race as a factor in affirmative action policies doesn't violate anybody's rights. What right, he asks, has Hopwood been denied ? Perhaps she believes that people have a right not to be judged according to factors, such as race, that are beyond their control. But most traditional criteria for university admission involve factors beyond one's control. It's not my fault that I come from Massachusetts rater than Idaho, or that I'm a lousy football player, or that I can't carry a tune. Nor is it my fault if I lack the aptitude to do well on the SAT.
   Perhaps the right at stake is the right to be considered according to academic criteria alone---not being a good football player, or coming from Idaho, or having volunteered in a soup kitchen.  On this view, if my grades, test scores, and other measures of academic promise land me in the top group of applicants, then I deserve to be admitted. I deserve, in other words, to be considered according to my academic merit alone. 
   But as Dworkin points out, there is no such right. Some universities may admit students solely on the basis of academic qualifications, but most do not. Universities define their missions in various ways. Dworkin argues that no applicant has a right that the university define its mission and design its admissions policy in a way that prizes above all any particular set of qualities ---whether academic skills, athletic abilities, or anything else. Once the university defines its mission and sets its admissions standards, you have a legitimate expectation to admission insofar as you meet those standards better than other applicants. Thise who finish in the top group of candidates--counting academic promise, ethnic and geographical diversity, athletic prowess, extracurricular activities, community service, and so on --- are entitles to be admitted ; it would be unfair to exclude them. But no one has a right to be considered according to any particular set of criteria in the first place. 
   Here lies the deep though contested claim at the heart of the diversity argument for affirmative action : Admission is not an honor bestowed to reward superior merit or virtue. Neither the student with high test scores nor the student who comes from a disadvantaged minority group morally deserves to be admitted. Her admission is justified insofar as it contributes to the social purpose the university serves, not because it rewards the student for her merit or virtue, independently defined. Dworkin's point is that justice in admissions is not a matter of rewarding merit or virtue ; we can know what counts as a fair way of allocating seats in the freshman class only once the university defines its mission. The mission defines the relevant merits, not the other way around. Dworkin's account of justice in university admissions runs parallel to Rawls's account of justice in income distribution : it is not a matter of desert.