Racial Preferences and Promoting Diversity: Are These Policies Taking Us in the Right Direction?-9-9-2014

Summary: The Obama administration is widely perceived to be an avid proponent of racial preferences. As Attorney General Eric Holder said in 2012, “The question is not when does [affirmative action] end, but when does it begin.” Several landmark pieces of legislation that President Barack Obama has signed into law—primarily on other topics, such as the Dodd Frank Wall Street Consumer Protection and Reform Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—have expanded racial preferences in federal hiring, contracting, and at regulated entities. The president has also issued multiple executive orders and related instructions that aggressively seek to expand the numbers of women and minorities in the federal workforce. The Obama administration’s response to Fisher v. University of Texas, 133 S. Ct. 2411 (2013), which directed courts to use strict scrutiny in analyzing whether admissions policies are narrowly tailored to achieve universities’ diversity goals, may be another such example. After Fisher, officials at the Departments of Education and Justice produced guidance documents that have been read to assure colleges and universities that they could continue using large racial preferences in student admissions. This panel will explore this proliferation of racial preferences and the likely effects of such policies. Among other things, panelists will discuss evidence that racial preferences in education do more harm than good to their intended beneficiaries, resulting in fewer under-represented minorities going on to high-status careers. The panel will also discuss efforts to protect women and minorities from ill-defined “harassment” as a means of maintaining diversity in the workplace and on campuses—and how these efforts may raise First Amendment concerns and create perverse incentives to discriminate against persons who are perceived as likely to view innocent or trivial workplace and campus interactions as harassment. -- This panel on "Racial Preferences and Promoting Diversity: Are These Policies Taking Us in the Right Direction?" was part of a day-long conference on Civil Rights in the United States held on September 9, 2014, and co-sponsored by the Federalist Society's Civil Rights Practice Group, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. -- Featuring: Mr. Hans Bader, Senior Counsel, Competitive Enterprise Institute; Prof. Louis Michael Seidman, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center; and Mr. Stuart S. Taylor, Jr., Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution. Moderator: Dr. Roger Pilon, Vice President for Legal Affairs, B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and Director, Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute.