Republican Sen. Tim Scott is calling for the end of legacy admissions.
The Hill reported Scott told Fox News that education should be the goal of the entire community. He said, “I think the question is how do you continue to create a culture where education is the goal for every single part of our community?” He proposed that ending legacy admissions is the solution to achieving this goal. “One of the things that Harvard could do to make that even better is to eliminate any legacy programs where they have preferential treatment for legacy kids, not allow for the professors — their kids to come to Harvard as well.”
Scott’s remarks followed the Supreme Court’s decision to rule out affirmative action on June 29, 2023. NBC News reported the Court’s majority opinion on Harvard and the University of North Carolina programs. The Court said the programs “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said legacy admissions are the equivalent of “affirmative action for the privileged” on Twitter.
Black Enterprise reported Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in the decision. “If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us,” she said. The Hill reported Vice President Kamala Harris agreed with Jackson and said on Twitter, “Today’s Supreme Court decision is a denial of opportunity. It’s not about being colorblind. It’s about being blind to history, blind to empirical evidence about disparities, and blind to the strength that diversity brings to classrooms.” CNN reported former President Barack Obama said affirmative action helped him and his wife Michelle Obama. He said affirmative action “allowed generations of students like Michelle [Obama] and me to prove we belonged.”
Scott’s call to end legacy admissions also comes on the heels of a public disagreement between himself and Obama. Black Enterprise reported the two had a difference in opinion about race in America.
