Just after lunch on a Thursday afternoon in late April, a chilly breeze and overcast sky have mostly blocked the sun from smiling on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The assistant director for diversity initiatives, Marcus Mathis, and a student helper from one of the school’s fraternities pile used paper plates, plastic utensils, and waste into huge trash bags.

Almost 200 mostly Black students from six high schools in Southern California’s Woodland Hills, some 80 miles southeast, have just left UCSB’s Loma Pelona Center. They spent the day listening to speakers, watching performances, and munching on catered grilled tri-tip, barbecue chicken, baked beans, potato salad, salad, freshly made garlic bread, and rice and peppers.

They didn’t come just for the food. They came to see faces that look like them – faces on heads with braids and Afros, with noticeable tattoos and familiar athletic wear – explain how they enrolled, navigated the mostly white affluent space that is UCSB, and found a family away from home to create memories that will travel through life.

“I’m glad this went well today. I spent a lot of nights worrying about how this would turn out,” Mr. Mathis says, mopping sweat from his brow as he looks up at Fluke Fluker, a recently retired high school teacher. Mr. Fluker is a founder of The Village Nation, a 20-year-old community-based organization that the school partnered with to get the students to campus. 

“UC Santa Barbara has been a jewel for us,” says Mr. Fluker. 

He started Village Nation, he explains, to get Black children in particular to make better choices, which would affect their grades, attendance, and disciplinary record. A byproduct has been college enrollment for many, and the partnership with UCSB has given students an opportunity to redefine themselves, create clean slates, and leave behind things that they have outgrown.

Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor

Students from Woodland Hills, California, high schools watch a presentation at the University of California, Santa Barbara during a recruitment trip to campus, April 27, 2023.

“Something that was really attractive to us is that it’s located in such a space that’s far enough for our kids to get away and get their independence and create their autonomy, but close enough that they can still stay connected to home,” says Mr. Fluker.

“UC Santa Barbara has a history of producing scholars, inventors, and scientists,” he adds. “Schools [like that] partnering with grassroots organizations that work directly with the kids is critical, and it completes the cycle in a positive way.”

Now, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that two race-based college admissions policies are unconstitutional, UCSB may become a reference point for universities around the country. While the high court appears to have left universities with some wiggle room to consider race in admissions, those policies are now, for the first time in 45 years, broadly prohibited nationwide.

California, though, has not had affirmative action for 25 years, and universities there have found a way forward. For Mr. Mathis and Mr. Fluker, the way forward on this April afternoon is to a nearby beach, where students pick seashells, pose for pictures, and play icebreaker games with members of UCSB’s Black Student Union.

This is the work. Sometimes it’s arduous, with long days and nights in rental cars traveling up and down America’s most populous state to speak with prospective students. Sometimes it’s asking for favors from faculty and staff or student groups when potential students visit campus. Sometimes it’s heavy labor – like breaking down tables. But the work is always strategic; it’s always intentional.

“We don’t try to do this as a sales job,” says Mr. Mathis. “Doing admissions for Black students is a lot different than maybe doing it in general. Everybody else is going to come here and love it. Generally people across the country know about our campus and what we have to offer academically. But Black students, all they know about Santa Barbara is that there’s no Black people.”

Retooling out of necessity 

When California voters banned affirmative action with Proposition 209, which became effective for students entering public colleges and universities in the fall of 1998, schools like UCSB had to pivot and be more tactical and strategic in recruiting. Schools and colleges in eight other states, including Michigan and Washington, also had to adapt after their states banned race-based admissions.

“The immediate effect was that the number of admitted minority students went down precipitously” in those states, says Jennifer Mason McAward, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School.

“They were able to, over 15 years and lots of very expensive efforts, get the numbers roughly back to where they were. But even then, the numbers of African American and Native American students never fully rebounded.”

When Proposition 209 passed in California, the immediate result was a steep enrollment decline for underserved minorities and first-generation college students of color for schools in the selective UC system. The decline was 50% at the University of California, Los Angeles. Many places still struggle decades later. Today, UCLA has a 5% Black population, and at Berkeley it’s 3.4%. Both used to be higher.

The University of California submitted an amicus brief in the two affirmative action cases, stating that selective schools might not be able to achieve student body diversity with race-neutral measures. “To fulfill their role of preparing successive generations of citizens to succeed in an increasingly diverse nation, universities must retain the ability to engage in the limited consideration of race contemplated by the court’s precedents,” it wrote.

Systems like UC exponentially increased recruitment and partnerships in high schools that enroll predominantly students of color, says Angel Peréz, chief executive officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. They know ZIP codes where students apply. They build partnerships with community-based organizations and recruit in Black churches and Latino community centers.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Activists demonstrate as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on a pair of cases that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions, in Washington, Oct. 31, 2022.

“A lot of colleges already do this, but I’m hearing that they want to expand this because it’s going to guarantee them a pipeline,” Dr. Peréz says.

That is what Lisa Przekop knows. Ms. Przekop, director of admissions at UCSB, says the losses of schools like UCLA and Berkeley have been UCSB’s gain. The school got about 125,000 applications last year for 7,000 slots. When affirmative action was banned in California, UCSB was an aspirational Hispanic-serving institution and directed efforts to recruiting more Latino students to campus. Today, the school, which includes 23,000 undergraduates and 3,000 graduates, is 25% Chicano/Latino. 

Currently, though, it has 4% Black students and only 1% Native American students. It has increased the budget and is trying new ideas to create a pipeline. Ms. Przekop can look outside her office window and see student groups giving prospective students tours. With fastidious care, her office corrals everyone – from faculty and administrators to student groups and alumni – to recruit. It has had Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor Jeffrey C. Stewart speak and has given out copies of his book “The New Negro.” It highlighted Professor Gerardo Aldana, an expert in Mesoamerican civilizations, and his work on the Marvel blockbuster “Wakanda Forever.”

“We’ve made it a point to embed ourselves all over campus, so that I have a list of faculty I can call, I have a list of students I can call, when I need help,” Ms. Przekop says.

Many of her staff members, including herself, have been advisers to student organizations. Also, with Black and Latino students in mind, Ms. Przekop’s team filmed candid videos of current underrepresented students on campus to get a picture of how life was at school. Some students admit it was difficult being the only Black person in a class. It felt isolated and lonely, and professors might have said something that offended sensitivities, Ms. Przekop says. Her office also tries to compile helpful tips, like the nearest barbers and salons that specialize in Black hair.

UCSB staffers get implicit bias training every year, especially readers, who look over applications. None of them can see application names, race, or ethnicity. UCSB keeps tight relationships with feeder schools that have sent them many students over the years, but it’s trying to add to that list, Ms. Przekop says.

“You can’t control who applies and you certainly may not be able to control the racial identity of the applicants, but you can control where you go and recruit, how you recruit,” says Dr. Peréz. “This is where the University of California, the state of Washington, and places like Michigan who have already had to deal with this for years will teach us a lot.”

Jonathan Drake/Reuters/File

Students walk through the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Sept. 20, 2018. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to strike down UNC’s affirmative action program, saying it violated the equal protection clause.

A “colorblind” Constitution?

Affirmative action in higher education has faced constitutional challenges for 45 years, but the Supreme Court previously repeatedly dismissed arguments that admissions policies favoring minority applicants violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. Because a university’s interest in maintaining a diverse student body is a compelling and precisely tailored one, the court had ruled as recently as 2017, such policies are constitutional.

With its decisions Thursday striking down race-based admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the current Supreme Court went the opposite direction. The rulings, both 6-3 along ideological lines, held that the programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

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

Specifically, the Harvard and UNC programs “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points,” he added.

Affirmative action programs were originally intended not to increase diversity, scholars note, but to help historically disadvantaged groups, particularly African Americans, achieve full equality. It was the Supreme Court, in a 1978 decision, that made a diverse student body the “compelling interest” behind affirmative action.

And in its June 29 opinion, “the court is very, very skeptical about educational diversity and its benefits in higher education,” says Professor Mason McAward.

“It talks about it as being commendable and worthy, but really not a coherent justification. It describes it as inescapably imponderable and doesn’t defer to universities at all in terms of how they don’t want to structure their classes,” she adds.

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Pew Research Center

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Ultimately, as other members of the court reinforced in separate opinions, in the context of college admissions any kind of program that uses race alone to distinguish students is unconstitutional.

“Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in a concurring opinion. The Constitution is “colorblind,” he added, and it prohibits “all forms of discrimination based on race – including so-called affirmative action.”

In impassioned dissents, the high court’s liberal wing accused the majority of effectively turning the Constitution inside out, using its racial equality amendments to further entrench racial inequality. The consequences, they added, could be severe.

“Today, this Court ... rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.”

In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – who recused herself from the Harvard case – lambasted the majority for “with let-them-eat-cake obliviousness ... announc[ing] ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat.”

“But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” she added. “Having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”

Steven Senne/AP/File

Graduates of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government hold aloft inflatable globes as they celebrate graduating May 30, 2019. On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court struck down the university’s affirmative action program as unconstitutional.

A new model?

Court watchers noted that the decision doesn’t seem to eliminate race from college admissions entirely. Universities can still consider an applicant’s “discussion” of how race has affected their life, Chief Justice Roberts noted in his opinion, so long as the discussion “is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability” that the applicant can bring to the university.

And hours after the chief justice read his opinion from the Supreme Court bench, President Joe Biden outlined how universities could do that.

“I propose consideration [of] a new standard, where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants,” he said.

Colleges “should not abandon ... their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience,” he added. “We need a higher education system that works for everyone, from Appalachia to Atlanta and far beyond.”

For UCSB, new standards have been steadily built up over decades. 

One of the school’s most fruitful initiatives has been LA to SB. It partners with 15 to 20 predominantly Black schools from Los Angeles to bring students to campus for a day. UCSB spends $3,000 per trip, which includes transportation, food, and swag. Students get the full-court press on campus: They meet with admissions counselors, hear application tips, and learn how to make essays stand out. They also receive campus tours, insight from current student groups, faculty presentations, and lunch. The university increased the budget for LA to SB after Black students complained to the administration that they wanted to see more people who looked like them on campus.

Technology has also helped UCSB cover more ground. Instead of visiting the same list of schools, it opts for virtual presentations so it can use money to chart new territory. Some work is service-based: Admissions officers do presentations at new schools simply to get students interested in college, even if they don’t choose UCSB.

When high school students visit, the school hosts workshops and talks with students about the personal insight questions featured on college applications. UCSB follows up with partnering schools to help edit PIQs, ask questions of students, and help them home in on what’s needed.

“We don’t do it for them, but we ask them clarifying questions. We point out things that they need to clear up for their applications to have the best chance for admission. We don’t see ethnicity, so all we can do is make sure that these Black students have the strongest application possible,” says Mr. Mathis from UCSB.

“All of those little things can help,” he adds.

Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor

University of California, Santa Barbara student Jude Kiruuta stands outside the Loma Pelona Center where he spoke to high school students about his collegiate experience, April 27, 2023. Mr. Kiruuta said he was accepted by several colleges, but he felt UCSB wanted him.

Jude Kiruuta came to UCSB in 2017 because, while other schools like UC Santa Cruz accepted him, he felt like Santa Barbara wanted him.

“There was a man who worked in admissions who reached out to me through email. We just had conversations. That was important, and then we met when I came for a tour,” says Mr. Kiruuta, a senior math major. 

“That made me feel like, ‘OK, they’re reaching out to me.’ None of these other schools reached out or said hello.”

Feeling wanted helped Mr. Kiruuta break out of his introverted shell. So much so that he met a plethora of friends, started a podcast on campus, and became president of the Black Student Union during his junior year. In late April, he tried to impart wisdom gained during his time at UCSB to students from The Village Nation.

Mars Baker, a high school senior from Woodland Hills, sat with friends and listened attentively. She’s already enrolled in a local community college near home, but she plans to transfer to a university later. One of the few Black students at her high school, she’s been purposely researching the Black student populations of universities. 

Hence her visit to UCSB.

“I loved being able to see the different programs, the culture and what it’s like, especially as a Black person,” she says.

“I’ve heard a lot of great things about this school,” she adds. “I had a couple of family members who told me that they liked their experience here and how much it helped them grow as a person, and I think that kind of inspired me.”

Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to deliver a speech at the Kremlin to units of a range of security forces, in the wake of last weekend's mutiny.

The coup, if that’s what it was, has failed. But one legacy, in particular, could complicate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determined efforts to put it in the past.

It is the sound of silence – from both Mr. Putin himself and his allies, most importantly China – as the mutineers approached Moscow.

The inescapable impression was of a president unsettled, uncertain, and simply unable to quash the most serious challenge in his 23 years in power – and of previously full-throated supporters hedging their bets until the outcome was clear.

It also brought home how the war against Ukraine – intended to buttress Mr. Putin’s and Russia’s standing – has, at least so far, had the opposite effect.

None of this necessarily means his hold on power is in danger. Nor will this impinge on his top short-term priority – to reestablish stability and his personal control, after the show of defiance by his longtime protégé, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner militia group.

Mr. Putin was keen this week to project a message of normality, declaring that “civil war” had been averted and shunting off Mr. Prigozhin and a rump of his fighting force to the neighboring client autocracy of Belarus.

Yet the echoes of the sound of silence as the militia advanced, largely unimpeded, to within 120 miles of Moscow last Saturday could continue to reverberate.

Reuters

Fighters belonging to the Wagner mercenary group pull out of the headquarters of the Southern Military District, in the city of Rostov-on-Don, which they had captured earlier.

That’s especially true because of what Mr. Putin did say, before he retreated into silence, in a brief address at the beginning of the rebel advance. It wasn’t just the sense of alarm he conveyed, or his warning of a “deadly threat” to the nation – jarringly different from his image, cultivated over two decades, of a leader in supremely confident control.

It was also the frank admission that in Rostov-on-Don, where Mr. Prigozhin’s militia had captured the Russian army’s southern command headquarters without a shot, the situation was “difficult,” and that “the work of the civil and military authorities is blocked.”

Reestablishing a semblance of post-putsch normality with allies and partners abroad may prove easier, since those relationships are rooted in shared practical interests. And once the rebellion failed, a range of foreign governments did issue statements of support for Russia.

Yet the silence from them as the crisis was underway suggests they may harbor new doubts about Russia’s future course, and about Mr. Putin’s ability to navigate the twin challenges of the Ukraine war and unrest within the Russian military.

China matters most: Mr. Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping sealed a “no-limits” partnership days before Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Economically the far weaker partner, Russia has become especially reliant on China since the invasion ruptured trade ties with the West.

Beijing also has a powerful, geopolitical interest in the alliance. It sees Mr. Putin’s Russia as a key partner in its central foreign policy priority: challenging America’s dominant place on the world stage.

Still, China said nothing about Mr. Prigozhin’s putsch until it was over.

Beijing broke its silence during a visit by Russia’s deputy foreign minister the following day. Even then, the statement was a response to Moscow’s readout of the talks, which said China had backed the “Russian leadership” in its response to the crisis.

China’s version did reaffirm the alliance. But it pointedly omitted mention of Mr. Putin’s leadership, saying only that Beijing supported Russia in “maintaining national stability and achieving development and prosperity.”

Grigory Sysoev/Sputnik/Reuters/File

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping attend a reception at the Kremlin in honor of Mr. Xi's visit to Moscow on March 21, 2023.

Moscow’s efforts to secure backing from other foreign friends fell flat.

Mr. Putin contacted a number of leaders while the outcome hung in the balance, including Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a NATO member with whom he has built strong personal ties. Moscow’s account was that Mr. Erdoğan offered “full support for the steps taken by the Russian leadership.” Turkey’s version was that Mr. Erdoğan simply urged Mr. Putin to act with “common sense” and that the Turkish president was ready to help achieve a “peaceful resolution as soon as possible.”

Even a call to Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who used Russian troops last year to quell public unrest, ended with the Kazakh leader telling Mr. Putin that the putsch was a purely internal Russian affair.

The sound of silence was not limited to Mr. Putin’s friends.

The United States, in coordination with its own key allies in Europe and Asia, agreed on its need to keep mum as well.

This was partly for the same reason that China and other countries were loath to weigh in: They could not know how this unprecedented challenge to Mr. Putin would end.

But for Washington, there were other considerations as well – especially relevant as the world waits to see how Mr. Putin will move in the weeks ahead to demonstrate that he is undaunted and back in command.

Washington and its NATO partners did not want to provide Mr. Putin with political ammunition for accusations that the putsch was instigated by the West. And more generally, they did not want to risk making a confused and volatile situation in Russia even worse.

Their ultimate fear? A collapse of central control, even if it is Mr. Putin’s control, over a sprawling Eurasian power armed with nearly 6,000 nuclear weapons.

Bryan Dozier/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard speaks with reporters at a Monitor Breakfast in Washington on June 29, 2023. She defended President Joe Biden's policies, amid low public approval for his economic record.

Lael Brainard is adamant: The United States economy has improved markedly since the twin shocks of the pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine, and sooner or later, Americans will notice that.

But President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser acknowledges there’s still a perception gap. Recent opinion polls show about two-thirds of Americans view the president’s handling of the economy negatively – a potential hindrance to his reelection in 2024. 

At a Monitor Breakfast on Thursday, Dr. Brainard, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, lists the positives: The price of gas is down by $1.40 since its peak. Some grocery prices are coming down, and the inflation rate has declined by more than half – from 9.1% year over year, to 4%, as measured by the consumer price index. Jobs are plentiful, as seen in the low 3.7% unemployment rate for May. 

But doesn’t inflation – still double the 2% rate the Federal Reserve is aiming for – trump everything?

“Having a job trumps everything, and having a good job is very, very important,” she says. “So it’s the full picture. People have better net worth. They have more financial resilience. And yes, they experienced a burst of high prices, particularly at the pump, associated with the war, and supply chains being scrambled. But those prices are now normalizing, and inflation has come down a lot.”

Dr. Brainard also sounds a more optimistic note on “core inflation” – which excludes food and energy prices – than does her former boss, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. On Wednesday, the Fed chair said he didn’t expect core inflation to reach 2% until 2025. But Dr. Brainard said Thursday that, within the range of forecasts, she could see core inflation declining to 2%, or slightly above, before the November 2024 election. 

“There’s every reason to think that that’s possible,” she says, citing forecasts that housing costs – a key element of core inflation – will decline considerably in the second half of this year. 

As if to put an exclamation point on her remarks, the Commerce Department reported Thursday morning that economic growth for the first quarter of 2023 was adjusted upward to an annual rate of 2%, nearly double the preliminary report of 1.1% issued in April. 

“It’s hard not to conclude maybe, maybe the economy’s actually kind of resilient and kind of chugging along, doing pretty well,” Dr. Brainard says.

The Harvard-trained economist joined the Biden White House in February after nine months as vice chair of the Federal Reserve and almost nine years as a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors. Now in a political role, she can be more of a cheerleader for “Bidenomics” – and she didn’t hesitate to defend the term that Mr. Biden himself had treated with some ambivalence until this week.

“He stood in front of how many banners, five banners, yesterday?” Dr. Brainard said of Mr. Biden’s economic address from Chicago on Wednesday. 

“Bidenomics” has come to stand for the president’s rejection of the tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy “trickle-down economics” of the Reagan era and support for policies Mr. Biden says will expand the middle class. 

One major Biden initiative – student debt forgiveness of up to $20,000 for millions of Americans – remains before the Supreme Court, with a ruling expected this week. Dr. Brainard declined to reveal any White House contingency plans in the event the program is struck down. 

Following are more excerpts from Thursday’s Monitor Breakfast, lightly edited and condensed for clarity: 

If Mr. Biden wins a second term, can you foresee his administration taking on longer-term issues, such as the labor shortage – including immigration reform – and the national debt? 

That would certainly be the president’s plan. And he has laid out the tenets of comprehensive immigration reform. It would be great to see some progress on that. We are actually seeing a normalization of the role of immigration in the labor market. So after a period of very depressed foreign-born participation, it’s actually improved in the last two years, I think. 

Secondly, it would be so important for the country’s future to have a good, balanced conversation about even more fundamental fiscal reform. The president has put on the table $2.5 trillion in additional thoughts and proposals, [and is] very specific in his budget about creating a fairer tax system. But I think having that discussion in a kind of balanced way would be so important for the fiscal health of the country.

What more can be done to address public unhappiness with the economy? 

The most important thing that we can do is deliver. We’re in an unusual position of having very significant legislative achievements that allow continued, very robust delivery all around the country.

You’ll see that [in] the number of Cabinet secretaries and White House officials every day that are traveling to announcements, where they are welcomed by local officials, because there’s a groundbreaking or a ribbon-cutting, or the letter that the president received about a person in a rural community who’s going to put his picture above her router, because she finally has high-speed internet connection. He didn’t want to talk about that in his speech, but I like to talk about that.

That’s our focus, making sure that middle-class Americans are in a stronger economic position with better job opportunities, with the ability to get training, and also with more confidence that some of those key industries and their infrastructure are actually going to see the government being a partner to the private sector, rather than pulling back completely. 

What responsibility does the Biden administration have to help U.S. companies that face a backlash over Biden policies, such as China’s ban on Micron Technology memory chips? 

The economic relationship with China is complex. China has really played a complicated role in the global trading system for a long time now. There’s been a number of practices that they’ve engaged in that have led to the loss of technology and intellectual property. So it’s very important when we look at sectors where we have national security and economic security interests, that we take a very targeted approach. And we have been clear – de-risking, not decoupling. 

It is important to make sure that we are carefully protecting key technologies that are vital for national security purposes. And of course, we work with all companies to try to strike that right balance. This is not specific to the U.S. You’ll hear friends and allies around the world talking about de-risking, not decoupling.

Reuters

Students from the University of North Carolina’s class of 2023 prepare for portraits with their graduation robes at the college’s iconic Old Well in April.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today to end race as a factor in college admissions will now launch a vigorous and perhaps difficult search in higher education for legal and creative ways to deservedly educate more students from underrepresented racial groups. Yet it would be helpful to start that search by considering what the court ruling does not do.

It does not dispute as “commendable goals” the desire by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina – the two institutions at the center of the case – to cultivate, through diversity, a higher class of “engaged and productive citizens and leaders.” It also acknowledged the importance of “appreciation, respect, and empathy, cross-racial understanding, and breaking down stereotypes.”

Rather, the court has determined that doing so on the basis of any form of racial discrimination, regardless of the desired social effect, violates the constitutional guarantee of “equal protection under the law” in the 14th Amendment. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision, “the Court has permitted race-based college admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions: such admissions programs must comply with strict scrutiny, may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and must – at some point – end.” In reaching that decision, the majority sought to compel universities to find other means to work toward a more just and equal society.

Today’s decision comes at a time when concerns about social justice are prompting deeper discussions about diversity, equality, and reparations for past racial harm in offices, school boards, and legislatures across the country. Removing race as a factor in the composition of college classes, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, in no way prevents a consideration of race as a formative factor in individual experience.

“Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor acknowledged that Harvard and UNC have “reckoned with their past and its lingering effects.” She added, “Acknowledging the reality that race has always mattered and continues to matter, these universities have established institutional goals of diversity and inclusion.” Her main argument finds no objection from the majority: “Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality.”

The nation’s ongoing debate over race was reflected in today’s sharp and divided ruling. Yet it also places the burden of finding solutions back on both universities and citizens. The “commendable goals” of integrated campuses are not dismissed. Schools just need new and different means to achieve them.