Justin Driver - "The Fall of Affirmative Action" - David Strauss

Justin Driver will discuss his new book The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education. He will be joined in conversation by David Strauss. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op

Presented in partnership with The American Constitution Society

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About the Book: For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a decision hailed by the right as a triumph of conservative colorblindness and decried by the left as requiring the end of racial equity. Both sides, Yale Law School professor Justin Driver contends, are wrong.

Perversely, even when viewed through a conservative lens, the Court’s decision ushers in a less desirable admissions regime. The post-SFFA model places a new premium on students of color voicing their racial trauma in elaborate application essays, entrenching the very racial victimization and essentialism that conservatives purport to loathe. The Trump Administration’s assault on higher education has been fueled by distorted readings of SFFA, further clouding the opinion’s already opaque meaning. But SFFA, properly understood, leaves universities significant legal room to combat Trump’s anti-D.E.I. onslaught by adopting innovative policies that foster diversity—including preferences for descendants of slavery, members of tribes, and applicants from blighted communities.

Far from a mere eulogy, The Fall of Affirmative Action provides a blueprint for the future—a rallying cry for citizens to forge new paths to inclusion and push back against the notion that racial equality is doomed. The death of affirmative action, Driver insists, need not mean the death of opportunity.

About the Author: Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He is the author of The Schoolhouse Gate, named a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.  An elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he was appointed by President Biden to the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.

About the Interlocutor: David Strauss is the Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and he was a Marshall Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. His main interests are in constitutional law and related subjects. He is also the author of The Living Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2010), the co-author of Equality and Democracy: The Enduring Constitutional Legacy of the Warren Court (Oxford University Press, 2019), and a co-editor of the Supreme Court Review.