A Message from Dean Owens: Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision
Years ago, I visited Harvard’s campus to consider attending divinity school there. I remember walking through the quad filled with stately centuries-old buildings, anchoring an elite institution where so many had gained (or been given) access to a world-class education. I was a bit awed, but I also found myself grateful to have attended another world-class university with centuries-old buildings and a beautiful quad, only mine was a public school: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. How fortunate I was, I remember thinking, that such an education was within my reach.
Coincidentally, those are the very two schools at the heart of the supreme court’s decision to end race-conscious college admissions. Years ago, I looked at those schools and saw a tier of access along the lines of privilege, class, and wealth (though full disclosure, I wasn’t exactly competing for Harvard as an undergrad). Yet the commitments of equity call us to consider how deeply differentiated those tiers of access are for those impacted by systemic racism, and to continue the work of dismantling those barriers.
We can dream of a day when such interventions – reparative interventions, we might even say – are no longer necessary. The debate at the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision pivots on when we believe that moment of restoration has occurred, or rather when our interventions are doing more harm than good. It is not an easy question to answer, though I believe that the more we learn about the enduring legacy of white supremacy, the more we see that we are far from dismantling the hidden biases that limit access for our siblings of color.
Faithfully,
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens, Dean