Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in the New Era, Julie J. Park, Harvard Education Press, 2026, pp.260, $34.00 hardcover.
University of Maryland College Park, Professor of Education, Julie J. Park served as a consulting expert for Harvard in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 US 181 (2023) (hereafter SFFA). Harvard’s attorneys probably thought her research and status as a Korean American academic would be useful in rebutting the plaintiff’s contention that Asian-Americans were particularly harmed by preferences given to other groups. It is not clear what her exact contribution was to the defendant’s unsuccessful attempt to preserve racial preferences. None of the judges in the numerous trial and appellate decisions mentioned her work in their opinions.
Her book is an attempt to salvage as much campus racial proportional representation as possible. Its concluding chapter is titled: “We Won’t Go Back: Reimagining Admissions in an Era of Repressive Legalism,” where Park declares that:
SFFA took away one of the most critical tools needed to expand racial equity in higher education, the ability to consider demographic data around race/ethnicity to inform understanding of who a student is, their context for opportunity and potential contributions.
Consequently, she focuses on existing social justice flaws in American society, their influence in the admissions process at selective campuses, and how these campuses can continue to seek student bodies that reflect proportions of some minority race and ethnic groups by strategies minimizing SFFA’s principles.
Although the book’s cover says it offers “incisive examination of the SFFA rulings, their historical context and their implications for higher education policy,” readers who might expect a careful analysis of the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions in SFFA will be disappointed. Park believes SFFA was wrongly decided and should be interpreted very narrowly, but the book contains little discussion of the text and context of the actual decision. Perhaps that is because Park wanted to diminish SFFA’s significance. She had previously argued:
While a court technically could apply SFFA in the future to render consideration of race in scholarships and recruitment efforts illegal, that day has yet to come, despite the current administration’s faulty interpretation of the ruling. The fuzziness over the legality of traditional race-conscious scholarships and recruitment programs will remain until the question is decided by the courts.1
Consider, however, SFFA’s actual text. Chief Justice Robert’s majority opinion notes that the Court in Richmond v. Croson (1989) and Adarand v. Pena (1995) had created the review standard of “strict scrutiny” for any governmental use of race. That test, now applied in numerous cases, first requires there be a “compelling interest” for the use of race and second that any race-based implementation must be “narrowly tailored.” SFFA then adds a very high bar for creating a compelling interest. Except for controlling prison riots, governments cannot make any race-based policies or programs, unless they are remedying recent constitutional or statutory violations. (207). The SFFA opinion continued:
Accordingly, the Court has held that the Equal Protection Clause applies without any differences of race, color or nationality. It is universal in [its] application. (Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 359). Acceptance of race-based state action is rare for a reason: [d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded on a basis of equality. (Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S, 495, 517).
Roberts repeated his earlier admonition, “Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it.” (206) There is nothing fuzzy about that principle. It was most recently applied in 2026 in Louisiana v. Callais, barring the use of race in Congressional redistricting.
Although Harvard receives substantial public funding for various purposes, it is considered a private institution. Nevertheless, it is bound by the Civil Rights Act. The Court found its admission policies violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which states: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, denied the benefit of, or be subjected to discrimination in any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Nothing fuzzy about that language either.
Park either did not know or chose not to report the broad context of judicial decisions and settlements since 2021 ending a multitude of racial preferences created by federal, state, and local governments and private organizations. The Biden Administration lost nine straight cases in federal courts trying to defend racial preferences in awarding economic benefits in programs it created and in programs that were more than thirty years old. After SFFA, some public contracting preferences, race exclusive charitable funds, land and housing subsidies and state licensing board quotas had to be changed.2
Regarding race focused scholarships which Park thought was a fuzzy legal area even after SFFA, hundreds of them have been challenged and discontinued or became race neutral. Although she does mention it, her own University of Maryland campus’ black only scholarship program was found unconstitutional by a unanimous Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Podberesky v. Kirwan. (1994). After SFFA, Edward Blum, who was the head of its plaintiff’s organization, created the American Alliance For Equal Rights (AAFER). It promptly sued the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association regarding their race-based scholarships. After the lawsuits were filed, these organizations, who must have consulted competent legal counsel, settled by making the decision to go race neutral in future scholarship awards. Similar lawsuits against the American Association of University Women, Southwest Airlines, and McDonalds ended with the same result.
Park was most concerned about the impact of SFFA on underrepresented minorities (URM) in higher education. That term requires some definition. The groups designated as minorities are not based on statistics, but on political compromises reflected in various legislation. No Polish American or Italian American will be included as minorities in preference programs, but Americans of Spanish or Portuguese descent often are. Persons born in Morocco or Egypt will not qualify as African Americans. Although Asian-Americans are considered minorities in most economic racial preference programs, their academic achievements have excluded them from the URM category in higher education programs. Even in jurisdictions which are predominantly black or Hispanic, persons who can claim identification or ancestry with those groups will be classified as minorities in government programs.3
Underrepresented is also an ambiguous term. It is a bureaucratic racial or ethnic designation which does inquire about which identifications or values a person actually has chosen. In Maryland and some other jurisdictions, the required concept is “traditionally underrepresented” which means that, even if a statistical imbalance is now overcome, special consideration must still be given to groups that once suffered from discrimination somewhere.
Then there is the issue of determining the universe from which to calculate representation—the entire population, high school graduates, all applicants to college, those who meet admission standards? Park makes the same conceptual error Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made in SFFA, by criticizing the percentage of black students enrolled in public flagship campuses, while ignoring the powerful attraction of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in those states.
The SFFA majority decisively rejected the whole URM concept. It held “[O]utright racial balancing is patently unconstitutional.” (221-23) This is not a new rule. In Parents Involved v. Seattle School District, (2007), the Court declared:
Accepting racial balancing as a compelling state interest would justify the imposition of proportionality throughout American society, contrary to our repeated recognition that at the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not simply as components of a racial, religious, sexual, or national class.
SFFA opinions further savaged the current definition of race and ethnic categories. Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that the categories the university defendants used were “imprecise,” “overbroad,” and “arbitrary.” (216) Justice Gorsuch, in concurring, questioned the check boxes commonly used for racial and ethnic identifications. He noted they were created by bureaucrats without the help of “anthropologists, sociologists, ethnologists, and other experts.” Moreover, federal regulators had cautioned that these racial categories should not be interpreted as “scientific” nor “be viewed as determinants of eligibility for participation in any Federal programs.” (291) Justice Gorsuch’s analysis of “incoherent” racial stereotypes goes into detail about problems with the various racial classifications now in use by so many institutions.
In her book, Park focuses her attention on inequities in American society which she believes are then reflected in admissions decisions. For example, many campuses give some preference to legacy children or recruited athletes. These are policy decisions that should be debated in the context of an institution’s goals, but they are not constitutional issues, any more than preferences for student musicians, actors, journalists, or school leaders would be. While wealthy parents can provide advantages such as summer camps, sports clubs, SAT preparation, travel opportunities, and private tutoring that may strengthen a student’s admissions profile, none of these advantages involve illegality. Whether they are unfair is a more complicated question, one that may depend in part on how that wealth was acquired and whether affluent families ultimately pay substantially higher tuition and other expenses. At many selective colleges, those costs are approaching six figures annually and help subsidize the education of less affluent students. In addition, financial aid for lower-income students is available through most institutions as well as a variety of government programs.
There is nothing illegal about campuses providing special programs and benefits for students with specific academic goals that benefit society, first-generation students, or students from geographical areas where few students have previously applied or enrolled, so long as the area decisions are not racially gerrymandered.
So far, the impact of SFFA on overall selective campus racial and ethnic admissions does not show any consistent pattern. It is too soon to make a firm conclusion. The actual decision-making process is opaque, and the weight given to various factors may be difficult to discover. Recent Department of Justice litigation against the UCLA and Yale medical schools may yield new insight and rules. One thing that is already clear is that SFFA will effect many areas beyond higher education for years to come. Americans will be more often treated based on their individual characteristics and achievements and not on their racial and ethnic identities, thus fulfilling the mandate of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act.
George R. La Noue is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County; glanoue@umbc.edu. He is the author of Silenced Stages: The Loss of Academic Freedom and Campus Policy Debates (Carolina Academic Press, 2019). La Noue taught courses in constitutional law and education policy for over forty years at the American University, the University of Chicago, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the University of Miami, and Columbia University Teachers College. He has published fourteen law review articles and has served as the plaintiff’s trial expert in thirty federal cases involving race, ethnic, and sex discrimination. He last appeared in AQ with “Did the Biden-Harris Administration Inadvertently Kill Racial Preferences?,” Summer 2025 issue.
1 Julie J. Park, “Some DEI Programs are Vulnerable, Not Illegal,” Inside Higher Education, April 14, 2025
2 George R. La Noue “The Widening Effect of Students for Fair Admissions,” Federalist Society Law Review, 26 (March 3, 2025): 95-115.
3 David E. Bernstein, Classified: The Untold Story of Racal Classifications in America (Blackstone Publishing, 2022).
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