Most observers expected that with a Republican president in office, the federal government would take a traditional Republican view of race-conscious college admissions — in short, extreme skepticism about the use, value, and constitutionality of this form of affirmative action.
What those observers didn’t expect was how we would find out about the federal government’s shifting view from the Obama administration to the Trump administration — a leaked memo from the Department of Justice seeking lawyers to participate in “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”
The disclosure of that memo, in a New York Times article, set higher-education leaders on edge, as the issues surrounding affirmative action in admissions returned to the spotlight, barely a year after the U.S. Supreme Court last weighed in on the controversial practice. Here’s all of The Chronicle’s coverage, including news, analysis, and opinion.
