For a box score of colleges maintaining legacy admissions, see the College Transitions Network.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Lindsey Graham took the stage Saturday at a Donald Trump rally in his home state of South Carolina to massive boos from the crowd.

Graham attempted to begin talking over the jeers, which partially drowned out his remarks in support of the former president’s bid for a second term.

Some called Graham a traitor, according to a CNN reporter at the scene.

Trump later offered a halfhearted defense of the senator.  As reported by the Huffington Post.

“You know, you can make mistakes on occasion. Even Lindsey down here, Sen. Lindsey Graham. We love Sen. Graham,” Trump said, prompting a fresh round of booing.

“I know, it’s half and half,” Trump told the crowd. “But when I need some of those liberal votes, he’s always there to help me get them, OK? We’ve got some pretty liberal people, but he’s good.”

Back in April, Trump mocked Graham as a “progressive” at a fundraiser in New Hampshire, inspiring boos from the crowd there, as well.

Graham was a staunch ally to Trump over the bulk of his presidency, but did not parrot Trump’s false assertion that the 2020 election had been fraudulent — prompting Trump to put out a statement in 2021 saying that Graham should be “ashamed” of himself. Graham also enraged Trump supporters when he spoke harshly about Trump’s role in mobilizing the angry mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Attendees at Saturday’s rally told The Greenville News, a South Carolina newspaper, that they had tired of Graham.

William Billew, 74, told the paper he thought the senator was unreliable and didn’t like his “wishy-washiness.”

Over his two decades representing South Carolina in Washington, Graham has built a reputation as a fickle ally to his fellow Republicans.

Graham is a two-faced politician who deserves to be booed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had an informal interview with Chris Christie, and wrote about it in a piece entitled, “Jersey Boy Takes on Florida Man.”  During their discussion, Christie comments on Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Rupert Murdoch.  Here is an excerpt:

“But even for a guy (Christie) who could be plenty nasty as governor, trying to overturn democracy was a bridge too far.

“The idea that somehow everyone’s going to stand around and wait for him (Trump)  to collapse of his own weight and then say, ‘Oh, I didn’t say anything bad about him,’” he said. “He’s never fallen of his own weight. The only time Donald Trump’s ever backed off in his life is when he’s been beaten to back off. I saw it happen in Atlantic City. He was bankrupt three times. He had to finally give in and close down.”

Christie mocked Ron DeSantis responding to Jan. 6 by saying he was not in Washington — “Was he alive?” Christie asked Kaitlan Collins on CNN. He thinks DeSantis has already lost the authenticity contest: “If you say to Tucker Carlson that Ukraine is a territorial dispute and then a few days later you go to Piers Morgan and you call Putin a war criminal, well, it’s one or the other.”

What about the end of the love affair with Fox News and Trump?

“I’ve known Rupert for a long time,” Christie said. “I suspect Rupert’s view is, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Good reading.  The other Republican presidential hopefuls should heed Christie!

Below is Dowd’s entire column.

Tony

—————————————————

The New York Times

Jersey Boy Takes On Florida Man

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

July 1, 2023

I offered to help prep Chris Christie for the debate with Donald Trump.

Christie helped prep Trump in 2016, saying he played Hillary Clinton very aggressively so that Trump would think the real thing was “a cakewalk.”

And now, sitting at a table in the Times cafeteria with the former New Jersey governor, I figured I could play Trump.

We have both known the blackguard for decades. And let’s be honest. We want Christie on that wall. After years of watching Republicans cower before Trump, it’s bracing to see the disgraced former president finally meet his mean match.

Even my Republican sister, who does not want to vote for Trump — but may if it’s Trump versus President Biden — sent Christie money to help him secure a spot on the debate stage.

Trump has boasted that he’s so far ahead of his Republican rivals that he might not bother to show up for the first debate in August, hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee.

“I think that he’ll show up at the debates because his ego won’t permit him not to,” Christie said. “He can’t have a big TV show that he’s not on.” He smiled, adding: “He’s on Truth Social going bonkers, and no one’s paying attention? He won’t deal well with that.”

I warned that Trump is an asymmetrical fighter, so it’s hard to know how to go at him. Clinton tried to rise above him, and Marco Rubio imitated his crude style.

“You just brought up two of the most unskilled politicians I’ve ever met,” Christie said, noting about Trump: “I don’t think he’s ever gone up against somebody who knows how to do what he does. He’s never run against somebody from New Jersey who understands what the New York thing is and what he’s all about. For people like me, who’ve grown up here and lived my whole life in this atmosphere, he’s just one of a lot of people I know who have that personality. He knows I know what his game is.”

He said he isn’t running to get back at Trump for giving him a horrible case of Covid. Trump came to debate prep in September 2020 without telling Christie or anyone else that he had tested positive the day before, and Christie ended up in the I.C.U. for seven days. And he said he isn’t seeking payback because Trump didn’t make him attorney general. (Jared Kushner was still nursing a grudge because Christie put Kushner’s father in prison.)

But even for a guy who could be plenty nasty as governor, trying to overturn democracy was a bridge too far.

“The idea that somehow everyone’s going to stand around and wait for him to collapse of his own weight and then say, ‘Oh, I didn’t say anything bad about him,’” he said. “He’s never fallen of his own weight. The only time Donald Trump’s ever backed off in his life is when he’s been beaten to back off. I saw it happen in Atlantic City. He was bankrupt three times. He had to finally give in and close down.”

Christie mocked Ron DeSantis responding to Jan. 6 by saying he was not in Washington — “Was he alive?” Christie asked Kaitlan Collins on CNN. He thinks DeSantis has already lost the authenticity contest: “If you say to Tucker Carlson that Ukraine is a territorial dispute and then a few days later you go to Piers Morgan and you call Putin a war criminal, well, it’s one or the other.”

What about the end of the love affair with Fox News and Trump?

“I’ve known Rupert for a long time,” Christie said. “I suspect Rupert’s view is, ‘Enough is enough.’”

Is Trump, as his former chief of staff John Kelly said, scared to death?

“He’s scared,” Christie said. “Look, a guy like him, the last place you ever want to be in life is in jail because you give up all control, and he’s a complete control freak.” Trump is playing checkers, not chess, Christie said, just scrambling to make that next jump.

Christie is the ultimate Jersey guy. (His relationship with his idol, Bruce Springsteen, which shattered over his stint as a Trump sycophant, is “a work in progress,” he said.) So I wonder how he feels about Jack Smith zeroing in on vivid scenes at the golf club at Bedminster, N.J., with Trump waving around classified documents and then telling reporters it was simply “bravado” and the documents were merely plans for a golf course.

“Yes, because look, for Donald Trump, it is better to be called a liar than to go to jail,” Christie said. “If what it buys him is a get-out-of-jail-free card, he’ll take that trade every day.”

Trump has been peppering Christie with insults about his weight — “slob,” “Sloppy Chris Christie” and a phony video showing Christie feasting at a fried food buffet.

“I’m not going to say it never bothers me,” Christie said, noting that, whenever you’re hit for “a weakness or a failure,” it depends on your mood how hard you take it. But, he added, Trump is no Adonis, so “coming from him? Who cares? Look in the mirror. I always thought it was very funny that he has this vision of himself. He told me one time the reason he ties his ties so long is that it slenderizes him and I should do the same thing.”

Trump is also the one, back in 2005, who first suggested to Christie that he get lap-band surgery, which he eventually did. So, I ask, Trump used to be concerned about your health and now he viciously insults you about your weight?

“That’s, in part, the magic of him,” Christie said. “He’s got it in him to do either. It’s not like he’s unable to be charming. He can be. But only when he’s looking for something from you.”

What about the Biden age debate?

“I think he’s beyond his sell-by date, and I think Trump is, too, by the way,” Christie, 60, said, adding about Biden, “I think his family should let him go home.” He asked, “Are they actually motivated by love for this guy, or is it motivated by the grift?”

And Hunter Biden’s appearance at the state dinner for the Indian prime minister, two days after his plea deal?

“Look, that also shows you Joe Biden’s not in control, because if he were of right mind, I don’t care how much you love your kid, he doesn’t have to be at the state dinner,” Christie said. “It’s not like you’re saying, ‘You can’t come to the White House. I can’t see you. I can’t visit with you. You’re toxic.’”

He believes Kamala Harris is “a problem for Biden, and it will hurt him,” saying, “I don’t think Dan Quayle hurt George Bush 41. But George Bush 41 wasn’t 82 years old.”

Since we’re heading into the Fourth of July, I wonder if Christie is having any acid flashbacks to the Fourth of July weekend of 2017 when, as governor, he was photographed sunning himself on a closed public beach during a state government shutdown.

“My mistake,” he said. “I blew it. But no acid flashbacks.”

Dear Commons Community,

SpaceX launched the European Space Agency’s Euclid Telescope toward its ultimate destination 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away.  It will take a month to get there and another two months before it starts its ambitious six-year survey this fall.

Flight controllers in Germany declared success nearly an hour into the flight, applauding and shouting “Yes!” as the telescope phoned home after a smooth liftoff.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“I’m so thrilled, I’m so excited to see this mission up in space, knowing it is on its way,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said from the Florida launch site.

Named for antiquity’s Greek mathematician, Euclid will scour billions of galaxies covering more than one-third of the sky. By pinpointing the location and shape of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away — almost all the way back to the cosmos-creating Big Bang — scientists hope to glean insight into the dark energy and dark matter that make up most of the universe and keep it expanding.

Scientists understand only 5 percent of the universe: stars, planets, us. The rest is “still a mystery and an enigma, a huge frontier in modern physics that we hope this mission will actually help to push forward,” the European Space Agency’s science director, Carole Mundell, said just before liftoff.

The telescope’s highly anticipated 3D map of the cosmos will span both space and time in a bid to explain how the dark universe evolved and why its expansion is speeding up.

The lead scientist for the $1.5 billion mission (1.4 billion euros) said Euclid will measure dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision.

“It’s more than a space telescope, Euclid. It’s really a dark energy detector,” Rene Laureijs noted.

Fifteen feet (4.7 meters) tall and almost as wide, Euclid sports a 1.2-meter (4-foot) telescope and two scientific instruments capable of observing the cosmos in both visible light and the near infrared. A huge sunshield is designed to keep the sensitive systems at the properly frigid temperatures.

NASA, which contributed Euclid’s infrared detectors, has its own mission coming up to better understand dark energy and dark matter: the Roman Space Telescope due to launch in 2027. The US-European Webb telescope can also join in this quest, officials said.

Euclid was supposed to launch on a Russian rocket from French Guiana in South America, Europe’s main spaceport. The European and Russian space agencies cut ties following the invasion of Ukraine last year, and the telescope switched to a SpaceX ride from Cape Canaveral. Waiting for Europe’s next-generation, yet-to-fly Ariane rocket would have meant a two-year-plus delay, according to project manager Giuseppe Racca.

Congratulations to the European Space Agency!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Scientists have found ‘ghost particles’ or neutrinos being emitted from within our Milky Way galaxy, an exciting discovery that may open up a new window of research. According to space.com, neutrinos are formed from radioactive decay, something that occurs in nuclear reactors, when high-energy particles strike atoms. These particles are extremely difficult to spot as they barely interact with the rest of the physical world (hence the name ghost particles). As per the BBC, the scientists used detectors at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.  As reported by NDTV.

“This is the first time we’re seeing our Galaxy using particles rather than photons of light,” Prof Subir Sarkar from the University of Oxford told the BBC. This, he explained, provides a view of “high energy processes that shape our galaxy”.

“The neutrino is a ghostly particle; it’s basically almost without mass. They’re essentially moving at the speed of light and might pass through the Galaxy and not interact with anything. That is why, in order to see them, you need a massive detector,” he added.

A study giving details about the discovery has been published in the journal Science.

According to space.com, the observatory is embedded within a gigaton of ice. It encompasses 0.24 cubic miles (1 cubic kilometer) of Antarctic ice holding more than 5,000 light sensors.

These devices watch for the unique flashes of light that result from the rare instances in which neutrinos do smash into atoms, the outlet said.

The researchers focused on the plane of the Milky Way, the dense region of the galaxy that is spread around its equator. They studied a decade worth of IceCube data, analyzing 60,000 neutrinos.

Scientists have long believed that neutrinos originate from Milky Way, especially when cosmic rays strike dust and gas. But this is the first time they have made the discovery.

Cool stuff!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday continued its ideological assault this week by ending affirmative action in higher education, declaring a new right to discriminate against gay couples and voiding President Joe Biden’s plan for student loan debt relief.  Paul Blumenthal of The Huffington Post has an analysis of the Court and its recent decisions. His conclusion quotes Abraham Lincoln:

“As Abraham Lincoln said when confronting the court’s horrendous Dred Scott decision: “If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

See Blumenthal’s entire piece below.

Tony

————————————

The Huffington Post

The Supreme Court’s Conservative Supermajority Continues Its Work Rolling Back The 20th Century

By Paul Blumenthal

Jun 30, 2023, 04:33 PM EDT

When five conservative justices on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the right to an abortion in 2022, it signaled a new era for the court’s conservatism, one in which none of the rights and policies that emerged from the 20th century appeared safe.

It also spawned a debate over the internal dynamics of that conservative supermajority. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join his fellow conservatives in overturning Roe. Had Roberts lost control of the court to the conservative ultras like Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito? Would he regain control in the next term?

The decisions released at the close of the court’s most recent term in June ― ending affirmative action in higher education, declaring a new right to discriminate against gay couples and voiding President Joe Biden’s plan for student loan debt relief ― present a different question: Does it even matter if Roberts is in the driver’s seat?

The conservative movement that built this court has long sought to roll back the legal and policy advances meant to blunt historic bigotries and discrimination, as well as the ability of the federal government to aid people harmed by the power of private capital. And they are continuing on that path whether Roberts or the ultra cohort runs the court.

At first, the conservative movement hoped that Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 would allow them to sweep away the policies of both the New Deal and the 1960s and 1970s, but they could not consolidate political power to do so through the legislative and executive branches. Instead, they launched a legal movement to win control of the judiciary and enact their policies outside of the political process.

That is what they have done over the last decade. They gutted the Voting Rights Act, first in 2013 and again in 2021. They blew a hole in restrictions on religious prayer in schools in 2022. And, of course, ended protections for reproductive rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Their progress continued this term.

In ending affirmative action in higher education, the court declared that the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect and advance the rights of Black people after the end of slavery, prevents colleges and universities from taking race into consideration in admissions.

While at first affirmative action in education was implemented to correct the historic wrongs of anti-Black racism, from slavery to Jim Crow segregation and on, it was upheld in later decisions solely on the basis that it increased diversity in a school’s student body. The court gutted these precedents, fulfilling an unfinished policy goal that conservatives hoped would come during Reagan’s two terms in office. Thomas, in declaring those precedents overturned, argued that affirmative action reflected “the same naked racism upon which segregation itself was built.”

By voiding Biden’s student loan debt relief plan, the court continued the conservative movement’s political goal of restraining the executive branch’s ability to regulate or alleviate the ills of private capital. To do so, they have developed the sweeping “major questions doctrine,” which enables the court to decide that the executive branch has exceeded the authority delegated to it by Congress.

This doctrine, as Kagan said in her dissent in the student loan case, makes the court “the arbiter — indeed, the maker — of national policy.”

When the court deployed the major questions doctrine to kill carbon emissions regulations in 2022, Kagan called it a “get-out-of-text-free card” that the conservatives can use to void executive branch policies that go against their ideological “goals.”

What this doctrine provides is the power for the court to single-handedly approve or deny policy that violates the political goals of the conservative movement that appointed it.

The case of 303 Creative v. Elenis presented a newer question to the court beyond the controversies of the 20th century. The legalization of same-sex marriage by the court in 2015 spawned a new direction for anti-LGBTQ reactionary policymaking. In response to anti-discrimination laws passed in states like Colorado, right-wing Christians argued that they held the right to deny service, like baking wedding cakes or making wedding websites, to same-sex couples.

Despite the plaintiff in the case never having made a wedding website for anyone, let alone a same-sex couple, the court ruled that the First and 14th Amendments protect business owners from government “coercion” to provide service to same-sex couples. Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that allowing this kind of discrimination was actually a recognition of “tolerance.”

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “For the first time in its history, [the court] grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”

The conservative movement that brought Reagan to power in 1980 also sought to quash the still-nascent gay rights movement. It failed mightily, but today a growing reactionary force seeks to snuff out that torch with new tools. The court’s decision granting the right to discriminate against a protected class based on one’s religious beliefs is a potent one.

While these decisions affirmed the court’s continued conservative bent, other decisions, particularly coming from the chief justice, have produced encomiums to Roberts’ reassertion of control.

In two key election law cases, Roberts ― along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and, in one instance, Amy Coney Barrett ― joined the liberals against their fellow conservatives. In Moore v. Harper, the court shot down the strongest version of the radical independent state legislature theory that would have removed state courts from reviewing any congressional district maps or state election laws. And in Allen v. Milligan, a 5-4 decision by Roberts found that Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to draw a second majority-Black congressional district.

the Voting Rights Act, not completely gutting checks and balances and not authorizing unchecked minority rule, they simply retained the status quo. That is a status quo that the court had already weakened when it gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and Brnovich v. DNC in 2021, and removed the federal judiciary from reviewing partisan gerrymandering claims in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019.

Where the court’s conservative bloc has split, it has been on questions of how fast to change the status quo. Roberts ― with his background as a political operative ― favors a slightly slower schedule than the ultras, but in areas of longtime agreement among conservatives, where there is limited concern about harming the court’s legitimacy, and where it is politically advantageous for the Republican Party, he is fine to plow ahead.

The conflict emerged in Dobbs because overturning Roe was both politically disadvantageous to Republicans and potentially harmful to the court’s legitimacy. But on an issue like affirmative action, which, unlike abortion rights, is broadly unpopular, it’s full steam ahead.

Democrats and liberals are now faced with how to confront the court or blunt its decisions. Following the court’s affirmative action decision, Biden stated, “This is not a normal court.” But when asked about proposals by some lawmakers to add seats to the court to counter its conservative drift, he objected.

“If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy, that you can’t get back,” Biden said.

Whether through court expansion or not, the only way for liberals to confront the court and respond to its decisions is through politics. College admissions officers finding ever more byzantine ways to increase minority enrollment is not the answer. Neither are efforts at creating new legal doctrines ― or trying to use existing conservative ones ― to win in the undemocratic arena of the judiciary.

The court’s political goals are clear. It is finishing the realignment that Reagan never completed. But it is vulnerable because the political majority that created the Reagan realignment no longer exists.

The question for liberals is how to build a political majority big enough to counter it. Trying to revive what is lost through the same old means of bureaucratic policymaking and judicial decisions is not the answer. The business of building a majority through politics is the only way to assert the power of the people over the anti-democratic whims of the justices.

As Abraham Lincoln said when confronting the court’s horrendous Dred Scott decision: “If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court … the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Charles Koch

Dear Commons Community,

Americans for Prosperity Action, a conservative U.S. political network led by billionaire Charles Koch has raised over $70 million to spend on political races with a key goal of stopping former President Donald Trump from winning the 2024 Republican nomination.

This group, which pushes for tax cuts and less government regulation, is set to dive into the Republican presidential primaries for the first time in its two-decade history.  See ad below that this group has sponsored.

Koch, ranked among the richest people in the world, compiled his wealth as an executive at his family’s company Koch Industries, a conglomerate involved in fossil fuels, commodities and other businesses.

It was unclear what proportion of the $70 million raised by the Americans for Prosperity Action, will go directly to tackling Trump. But the group has made clear that beating him in the primaries is a top priority, as they think he would lose the November 2024 election to President Biden, who beat Trump in 2020.  As reported by Reuters.

“There is a clear sense of urgency around choosing candidates who can win,” an official with the Americans for Prosperity advocacy group said.

“Even a significant number of President Trump’s owns supporters are concerned about his electability and open to an alternative.”

News of the $70 million raised was first reported by the New York Times on Thursday.

The Koch-backed network of political organizations was founded by Charles and his brother David Koch, who died in 2019. It now includes a larger group of donors. Historically, they have spent millions of dollars backing like-minded Republican candidates for office.

The Koch network has yet to back a candidate, but has joined other big Republican donors in scrambling to try to defeat Trump. The real estate businessman and former reality TV show host has a 20 percentage point lead over his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in a crowded field of Republican presidential hopefuls.

Conservative donors fear Trump, whose divisive and freewheeling governing style alienated more moderate Republicans, will lose again to Biden.

DeSantis, once seen as the most likely to beat Trump, has not seen a big poll bounce since launching his candidacy in late May and is languishing a distant second.

The Koch network intends to make an endorsement before the Iowa caucus in early 2024, the AFP official said.

We wish Koch and his network well!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The City University of New York could offer hundreds of fully online programs by 2030, according to the public higher education system’s strategic plan released Wednesday.

CUNY set a goal to offer 287 online certificates and degrees in the next several years for students who prefer flexible options because of their responsibilities to family or jobs, or distance from physical campuses. If successful in that aim, the expansion would mark a seismic shift for CUNY since students returned to campus following pandemic-era school closures. In 2021, there were only 82 programs students could altogether complete online, university data show.

“The prosperity of New York and the legendary cutting-edge talent of CUNY are intertwined,” said CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez in a statement.

“Moving forward, it is imperative that we ensure the University’s ability to meet the evolving needs of students and employers across the region.”

The virtual programs were just one prong of a full seven-year, systemwide plan to increase career opportunities, student services and research that benefits the public. The process was led by a steering committee that convened town halls and other sessions over 18 months.

CUNY plans to add 30 online degrees and certificates across 20 campuses over the next year, based in part on a market analysis of its programs finished in December. Faculty training programs and technology infrastructure are also being made available.

The faculty union at CUNY has raised concerns.

“We are still learning about this initiative,” Penny Lewis, secretary of the Professional Staff Congress, wrote in the union newspaper last month. “But what we do know so far has given us cause for alarm.”  Lewis said it seems “extremely likely” that a large online initiative would take time and resources away from current courses and faculty. She also noted that CUNY already offers the School of Professional Studies, which specializes in online degree programs.

“We don’t want CUNY to approach the ‘degree mill’ status to which some online programs have sunk across the country,” Lewis wrote.

The union has already filed charges with the Public Employment Relations Board, a union spokesperson confirmed, as instructional design work performed by union members would be outsourced under a nearly $8 million contract approved this spring.

Some faculty at CUNY were teaching online in the late 1990s.  This initiative was a long time in coming.  We hope it is implemented successfully and gracefully!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

Previously, the Supreme Court had allowed the use of race in admissions in decisions reaching back to 1978. And it had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016.

Now, however, with a six-justice conservative majority, the justices overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Leaders of scores of universities said Thursday that they were disappointed by what they see as a blow to diversity. Yet many also voiced optimism that they would find new ways to admit more Black and Hispanic students, despite evidence that eliminating the practice often leads to steep enrollment decreases among them.

President Joe Biden said he disagreed with the decision and asked the Education Department to explore policies that could help colleges build diverse student bodies. He also pushed against policies like legacy preferences — admissions boosts given to the children of alumni — that tend to help white, wealthy students.

“We should never allow the country to walk away from the dream upon which it was founded,” Biden told reporters. “We need a new path forward, a path consistent with the law that protects diversity and expands opportunity.”

Yet evidence from states that previously outlawed affirmative action show it will be a daunting challenge.

As an alternative to affirmative action, colleges from California to Florida have tried a range of strategies to achieve the diversity they say is essential to their campuses. Many have given greater preference to low-income families. Others started admitting top students from every community in their state.

But years of experimentation — often prompted by state-level bans on considering race in admissions — left no clear solution. In states requiring race-neutral policies, many colleges saw enrollment drops among Black and Hispanic students, especially at selective colleges that historically have been mostly white.

Given the current makeup of the Court, this decision was expected.  It will be a major blow for diversity in our colleges and our society as a whole.

Tony