By Christian Collins

The Leadership Conference Education Fund, in collaboration with CLASP, recently released We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education. The agenda, which has been endorsed by NAACP, the National Urban League, and the National Women’s Law Center, offers 100 specific strategies that federal and state policymakers and institutional leaders can adopt to ensure postsecondary educational access for all students regardless of racial identity.  

Our postsecondary system continues to navigate uncertain waters that include mitigating the impact of recent Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) challenges, direct political threats to end the federal Department of Education, and continued roadblocks placed on long-needed debt relief for student loan borrowers. Opponents of racial progress in education have used both this tumultuous period and recent legal victories to apply pressure on institutions to no longer incorporate racial equity in postsecondary education. Institutions, policymakers, advocates, and other stakeholders must not use these challenging times to cede victories to the anti-racial equity movement, but as an opportunity to utilize strategies like those outlined in We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education to publicly reaffirm their commitment to a postsecondary system that removes, not reinforces, obstacles to equity. 

Equity and Diversity Remain Compelling Interests in Postsecondary Education 

Last year’s Supreme Court rulings on the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions were the onus for the We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education. In these decisions, the Supreme Court upended more than four decades of precedent and weakened equal opportunity in college admissions. Race-conscious admissions policies were one of few protections that racially marginalized students had from a postsecondary system that has never been meritocratic.  

National reaction to the loss of race-conscious admissions showed that the lack of meritocracy is not just evident within the educational outcomes experienced by different demographics, but also within the way we publicly discuss the impact of the loss. The bulk of institutions under scrutiny with their latest admissions classes are highly selective and often private “elite” institutions, whose status is intrinsically tied to creating admissions scarcity by rejecting applicants along racial and socioeconomic lines. However, the loss of race-conscious admissions will impact enrollment and retention at all institutions, ranging from the most selective to community colleges.  

The current narrow scope of evaluating the loss of race-conscious admissions has diminished the urgency to end current policy and cultural assaults on institutions offering educational opportunities for underrepresented students. Removing race-conscious admission practices has not stopped opposition to diversity, and restoring the small number of admissions at highly selective institutions that were available through those policies should not be the end of transforming the postsecondary education system. 

The 100 recommendations outlined in We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education encourage the entire postsecondary system to engage in the work of removing racially based educational barriers that plagued the system even with race-conscious admissions in place. Contrary to the argument that any diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts now violate federal law, the recommendations in this agenda comply with federal statutory and constitutional terms. 

A lack of broad implementation of policies like prioritizing recruitment of rural students of color and community college transfers; bridging resource gaps faced by institutions serving higher proportions of traditionally marginalized students; and expanding the basic needs supports available for students cannot be blamed on the loss of race-conscious admissions. Yet these policies, along with others highlighted in We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education are necessary to expand educational opportunities.  

Just Like a Tree Planted by the Water 

We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education represents a call to action for the postsecondary education system and its stakeholders. It calls for restoring the system to where it was before the loss of race-conscious admissions and also redesigning the foundational policy blocks that make up the system. These recommendations will not remedy every malaise currently impacting postsecondary education; but they offer a bold reimagining of how postsecondary education can become an educational system that remedies its prior history of discrimination for the benefit of all students.