Restoring Powell’s Vision for Viewpoint Diversity

February 28, 2025 -- Affirmative action failed its original purpose and has left campuses ideologically uniform. As of June of 2023, race-based affirmative action is no longer permissible, and even when it was practiced, it failed to achieve its goals.

By Malcolm Mahoney

When former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell authored his 1978 opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke — which determined whether affirmative action violated the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment — he justified race-based admissions as a means to achieve diversity that fosters a “robust exchange of ideas.” The deference that universities were granted when selecting their incoming classes was thus carefully predicated on achieving the educational benefits that flow from “viewpoint diversity,” a point that is almost entirely overlooked in the modern discourse surrounding this issue.

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https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2025/02/mahoney-restoring-powells-vision-for-viewpoint-diversity