Why an ‘Affirmative-Action Bake Sale’ Prompted This President to Speak Up

K.Y. Cheng, South China Morning Post via Getty Images

Campus-based affirmative action has been debated in the courts recently, and the threat that it could be rolled back nationally looms large. But in eight states, the consideration of race in admissions is already against the law. Last week, though, legislators in one of those states — Washington — voted to reverse that policy.

Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington, was in favor of overturning the ban, which voters approved in 1998. The new law, known as Initiative 1000, doesn’t go into effect until July 28. Its opponents plan to petition to get the affirmative-action ban back on the ballot in a referendum in November. They’ll need 130,000 signatures by July 27.

On Friday members of the UW College Republicans staged a protest bake sale in which they assigned prices to cookies according to buyers’ race and gender. (“Affirmative-action bake sales,” a well-worn form of conservative protest, are meant to expose what organizers deem the absurdity of treating people differently because of their race or gender.)

Cauce, who was born in Cuba and joined the Washington faculty in 1986, condemned the bake sale as crude and outrageous mockery. In a message shared with the campus, she said the event was not representative of all university Republicans and called for a serious, reasoned debate on the policies.

Cauce spoke with The Chronicle about this moment on her campus. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q. You’ve been supportive of a reversal of Washington’s affirmative-action ban, Initiative 200. Do you think it will have a meaningful effect in terms of which students you’re able to enroll?

A. We’ve been recognized by others as doing a good job of having a reasonably diverse student body on campus through a holistic admissions process. I do believe that a repeal of the affirmative-action ban will allow us to do even better.

Where we feel particularly at a disadvantage, really, is in terms of hiring the best faculty and staff. We hire from all over the country, and with much of the country not having regulations such as this, the very fact that we have such sends a message. I sometimes get asked by faculty, by deans whom we’re recruiting from other places, by high-level staff, What does this mean? Will this make it possible for me to do my job? What does this mean about your state and diversity?

I wonder, quite frankly, if we had had I-200 when I was hired, would I have been hired? But more important, would I have come?

Q. If the ban had been in place then, would that have given you pause?

A. I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t have. Because of the message it sends, because my research has focused on students of color, youth of color in high-risk situations, I would have wondered, How would this affect my ability to recruit and hire graduate students who would be able to carry out the work that I was doing at the time? There’s no question in my mind it would have given me pause. Can I say it would have been the deciding factor? I don’t know.

Q. I don’t hear people talk much about how these bans affect faculty recruitment. It’s mostly about students.

A. As we diversify our student body, which is something we’ve been working on doing with some success — not the full success that we’d like — it’s important that they have pathways all the way up into graduate school, into academic positions. If you talk to our faculty of color, they will tell you that in these days, when issues around race have unquestionably become more fraught, they often end up doing more than their fair share working with students who are impacted by this.

Across the country, we’re going to be having a generational shift in terms of our faculty. Depending on how you count, somewhere between 30, 40, up to 50 percent of our faculty will be retiring in the next 10 years or so. This is our chance to diversify our faculty, in terms of race but also in terms of gender. I would like to have as many tools at my disposal for doing that as I can.

Q. You put out a pretty forceful statement on Friday against the College Republicans’ bake sale. Why did you see this as a moment when you needed to weigh in strongly?

A. First of all, I do think it’s important to point out, out of respect to our students, we now have multiple Republican student groups on campus. This was one of those groups, and, in fact, the other group objected to it.

I think there are pros and cons to affirmative action, and there are serious questions that can be raised about it. I believe strongly that important issues like this should be debated. But I think those debates need to be serious. I think there need to be forums where there’s room for serious give and take. This bake sale wasn’t one of them.

The posters that were advertising the bake sale were particularly offensive. They didn’t talk about the price of baked goods per se. They stated race and price next to it. There was an allusion that different people were worth different amounts. It was more than about the price of cookies. It seemed to be about the price of people. Particularly given that some people in the country have, in fact, had prices put on them, it was particularly provocative, and it was offensive.

Q. How will this play out on your campus in the months to come?

A. We’ll see. I expect that there will be debates. And I hope that there will be debates. These are important policies.

One of the things that I think will be interesting in terms of the debates is that they’re being carried out in a context where there’s been a lot more publicity shed on some of the other factors used for admissions. Although those other factors aren’t race per se, the evidence is clear that they tend to favor some races over others. There are relatively few underrepresented minorities in those groups — legacies and donors.

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.