Briefs on Harvard/U of North Carolina cases

Inside Higher Ed carries a report that various universities have filed friend-of-the-court briefs with regard to the US Supreme Court case dealing with admissions at Harvard and the U of North Carolina. Included is this information:

...The president of the University of California system and chancellors of UC’s 10 campuses said their system was an example of what the court should avoid.

“For the past 25 years, UC has served as just such a laborator[y] for experimentation,” the brief said. “After Proposition 209 [which banned affirmative action] barred consideration of race in admissions decisions at public universities in California, freshmen enrollees from underrepresented minority groups dropped precipitously at UC, and dropped by 50 percent or more at UC’s most selective campuses. Since then, UC has implemented numerous and wide-ranging race-neutral measures designed to increase diversity of all sorts, including racial diversity … Those programs have enabled UC to make significant gains in its system-wide diversity. Yet despite its extensive efforts, UC struggles to enroll a student body that is sufficiently racially diverse to attain the educational benefits of diversity. The short-fall is especially apparent at UC’s most selective campuses, where African American, Native American, and Latinx students are underrepresented and widely report struggling with feelings of racial isolation.” ...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2022/08/02/groups-file-briefs-supreme-court-defend-affirmative-action.