Noon Edition airs on Fridays at noon on WFIU.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently discussing the removal of race-based student admissions after hearing two cases involving the University of North Carolina and Harvard University. If the policy is reversed, universities across the U.S. would no longer be able to consider a student’s race as a factor for admission. 

Affirmative Action was established in the 1978 Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In the case, Allan Bakke, a white student, filed a lawsuit after being denied entrance into UC-Davis’s medical school because they reserved 16 of their 100 spots for minority students. But the Supreme Court ruled that universities have a “compelling interest” to have a diverse student body for educational benefits.  

Since that Supreme Court case, many universities adopted quotas like the one used at UC-Davis to increase diversity among their student body. Many have concerns about the future of equal educational opportunities for all students if these quotas are removed.  

We will discuss affirmative action and its future with our guests this Friday.  

You can follow us on Twitter at @NoonEdition or join us on the air by calling 812-855-0811 or toll-free at 1-877-285-9348. You can also send questions for the show at news@indianapublicmedia.org.      

Guests

Beth Cate – Corporation Counsel for the City of Bloomington and Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Public Affairs  

Kevin Brown - The Mitch Willoughby Distinguished Professor of the University of South Carolina School of Law, Richard S. Melvin Emeritus Professor Indiana University Maurer School of Law, & Emeritus Director of the Hudson & Holland Scholars Program

Luis Fuentes-Rohwer - Class of 1950 Herman B Wells Endowed Professor and Professor of Law at IU