 Hi, my name is Deshaun Carter. I'm a policy analyst on the higher education team here at New America. Two cases currently sit with SCOTUS, a student for fair admissions versus Harvard College and student fair missions versus the University of North Carolina, which could likely ban colleges and universities from proceeding race in their admissions process. If SCOTUS decides to overturn affirmative action, we can expect to see many damaging nirbling effects throughout the higher education system, let alone other institutions. Here at New America, we acknowledge that we are not experts on affirmative action, however, we are dedicated to making higher education more equitable and accountable, fighting for inclusion rather than exclusion, so that everyone can obtain affordable, high quality education. Therefore, we are very committed to using our platform to uplift those with deep expertise and knowledge to raise awareness and spark cohesive dialogue on creating future policies to ensure that higher education institutions are a guiding light in embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, without further ado, I want to welcome David Hawkins from Chief Education and Policy Officer at the National Association for College and Admissions Counseling, also known as NACAC. Thank you so much, David, for joining me on this call just to talk more about what can we possibly be thinking about as we await the decisions of affirmative action possibly being overturned? I want to kick this conversation off by just starting, learning more about you and your work and what interested you working in this particular policy space. Yeah, well, thank you, Deschan, for having me today and it's a pleasure to be here. You know, what fundamentally interests me in the work that NACAC does and that I do for the association is that I have a core belief in education as a great advance or a great equalizer, a great opportunity for so many people yet for so many people that opportunity gets foreclosed at one point or another by the systems that we've put in place by the inequities that are embedded in so many parts of our society. My mother was a teacher's assistant and then an early childhood educator while I was growing up and her commitment to the fundamental talents, strengths, knowledge that is included in every child that walks into the door was something I took away and it's so disappointing to see how our things that are beyond students' control can make such a difference in whether they actually get to show their strengths and show their knowledge or whether they're shunted to the side at some point. That was a very core element in my belief system that led me to this work and then subsequent to sort of going to college and getting a master's degree and coming out. The idea that we can make progress in the world is something that I fundamentally believe in that I'm committed to as a professional and the education space was a place where you can put those values into action and certainly at NACAC our core beliefs revolve around fairness, equity, social responsibility. So the conversation about who gets access to higher education particularly is of relevance to us and of course we believe that should be everyone who's interested in it but the reality on the ground is that that is not what is happening right now. So we are fundamentally committed to equity particularly as it involves the transition to post-secondary education. Thank you so much and again I appreciate your commitment and yeah commitment to equity especially within higher education and let alone just the education system itself. Going into my next question we know that this is not the first time affirmative action has come up. I'm thinking also about the previous case back in 2015 Fisher versus Texas. Do you see any differences between you know the cases what's going on with Harvard and UNC? Are there any similarities and do you think the higher education policy arena has changed since the last time affirmative action came up? Yes well certainly there are both similarities and differences in these cases. The broad similarity of course is that really for the past 50 years there has been a core group who is determined to drive out any consideration of race or ethnicity in college admission decision making. So that is the tie that binds. I think that goes without saying of course but might as well spell it out. In the Fisher case you know the the putative dispute was about a student a white student who was not admitted to the University of Texas and you know her individual claim that somehow her race was a factor in her not getting into the institution was the was sort of the core issue and of course the unspoken at the time case was simply that the plaintiff's attorneys were among those people who are just determined to see race have no role or race or ethnicity have no role in admission decision making at all. The UNC and Harvard cases are again putatively different they do have different claims the Harvard case the the plaintiff's attorneys are alleging to well they're purporting to represent Asian American students which we know is is by by no measure is the Asian American community aligned behind these plaintiffs. There is certainly division but we know that there's a substantial number of Asian Americans who are supportive of Harvard's efforts to to create a diverse student body. The the plaintiff's attorneys in this case or SFFA are taking aim at a class of students that's suggesting that somehow Harvard's sensitivity or awareness of race and ethnicity and its review process is systematically resulting in a higher bar for Asian American students to meet to get into Harvard so it's a more of a class issue in terms of the legal grounds on which the case is being brought and then of course in the UNC case you have the allegation that race is being used in a sort of box checking way that in in essence people are getting de facto points because of their race which of course the University of North Carolina disputes Harvard disputes the claims against it but the bottom line again is that this is a looking at this in the long arc of history or the not so long arc of history as the case may be there is just a core group of people in this country who are determined that race and ethnicity have no role have no place in college admission considerations. We of course vehemently disagree we see the systemic racism that that leads students to the point at which we see them in admissions and our our assertion is that race and ethnicity are so fundamentally part of a student's experience and a student you know the students themselves that to that to not consider them is in fact a form of discrimination in and of itself so those are the ties that bind some of the the differences between 2015 and now but the the endgame is still the same. Thank you for yeah thank you for expanding on that because I know a lot of people are like wow this is going to keep what's going to continue to keep coming up if you know like I said it's not the first time it's not the second time I can't even keep count on my hand anymore of how many times this this issue continues to come up but I think I also want to talk a little bit more about a little bit about the definition of affirmative action. I recently came across a poll where you know I think it was a Washington post char school they recently surveyed the general public about their views on race being considered in admissions process and I saw that about 70% had disapproved of race being considered in college admissions but then another 70% in that same poll also appreciated programs that helped increase diversity on college campus and I'm wondering is there like a disconnect between the general public and the definition of affirmative action or race or race conscious policy because I know those words tend to get interchanged a lot but I'm just curious to know like is there a disconnect on the definition and what can we do to I guess like under help the general public to understand what that definition is. Yeah you raise an excellent point here first of all the terminology affirmative action we no longer use that at NAC Act because affirmative action strictly defined is what was at stake in the Baki versus University of California Regents case in 1978. The court struck that down in 1978 and really affirmative action as it is defined has not been used in college admissions since 1978 so we prefer the term race conscious admission because as the University of Michigan case is back in the early 2000s emphasized colleges cannot provide points based solely on a student's race or ethnicity that was the undergraduate case at the University of Michigan where the admissions office was essentially providing a points in a numeric system if a student came for an underrepresented minority or racial or ethnic background. So I think part of the disconnect is that the media I think people who are on the opposing side from us tend to favor the term affirmative action just because in the media's case it's a handy shortcut in the in the conservatives case it is a loaded term. I think what accounts for the disconnect is if you sat someone down and said if you sat someone from the public down and said here is what affirmative action is and we no longer do this in admissions here is what race conscious admission or holistic admission looks like that accounts for the difference between the 70 opposed you know affirmative action in admissions versus 70 percent think diversity is an important element in a student body in higher education. A good example of this is that back after the so-called varsity blues scandal I think probably everybody remembers that given the given the celebrity nature of the of the scandal we actually and a number of other groups conducted focus groups of both conservative voters and liberal voters and both of them had from their own perspectives a fair amount of skepticism about college admission from the from the left you know folks tended to see it as skewed towards the wealthy and towards the you know towards the already advantaged which in many ways I think knackak acknowledges and has acknowledged on the record that it is conservatives tend to see more the racial aspect of it but when we sat these two groups down and they were separate so they didn't mix but when we sat the two groups down and said well let's take you through a sample selection process you have 15 students here you can take seven and here's all these different characteristics it was amazing that both groups came up with a very very similar way of sorting through those students both of which involved considerations of the students backgrounds including the high schools they went to their racial and ethnic heritage their income their parents level of education so I think what what happens in so many areas in American society and in fact the world is that our our world is so specialized it's so you know in order to fully understand any issue you really have to spend some time with it and I just don't think we as higher ed the media have really perhaps done a good enough job of sitting people down and saying this is what admission actually is let's talk about it on these terms and of course you have people trying to actively misrepresent the admission process and you have folks for whom the admission process sells ads and articles and things like that so there's a there are there are incentives to talk about admissions in a way that gets people riled up but perhaps we need to do a better job of of sharing with people what admissions actually is and what it isn't and in that way promote a broader understanding of of how a student's race or ethnicity might actually factor into the process while reassuring people that there are no more institutions that are saying just because you are from X community you get extra points in the admission process that does not happen anymore. Thank you for sharing that and yeah I do want to uplift that as someone who actually used to work a long long time ago in undergrad worked for an early outreach program that participated in the admissions process of like looking at that doing the holistic process it is very tedious and it's it's y'all deserve I don't I don't you know how to I don't even know how to describe it but y'all deserve a lot of kudos and effort because at the end of the day it is a very tedious process and it would be probably better to have um to you know just to lay it out for the for the general public to understand like this is the process that we're doing it's not always we're not always I don't even want to say this but it's not always about race but there's other factors that go into that um thank you for sharing that um wow that was that was great um so now moving into you know things are coming out of the south um particularly looking at Florida and Texas um about their DI efforts um are there actions possibly maybe a precursor to what we might see um unfold nationwide um if if a front of action is overturned and what is at stake um for higher education institutions and their current um DI efforts yeah excellent question um in fact we are seeing this um as you said Florida and Texas are exits A and B um we're seeing this in many other states uh couple of couple of points in response to your question number one this is a significant complicating factor um you asked earlier about the difference between the Fisher case in these two cases I talked about the legal considerations a huge environmental consideration that was not present in the Fisher case or any of the other cases um in recent memory at least is this very deliberate very aggressive backlash um against you know progress in general of the way I tend to see it but that that these these very proactive efforts to actively discriminate against communities and to actively erase um you know history from textbooks and you know and and and go after DEI initiatives at in both the K-12 and higher ed context that is a significant complicating factor um I think in in in response to how will we deal with this moving forward number one we're advising our institutions and we're saying it ourselves these court cases this this movement in this country right now will not stop us from striving towards progress when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion that train left the station many many years ago if we hope to be uh the kind of society that we want to be uh if we want to remain relevant to the world uh if we want to remain economically vibrant you could the list goes on and on right if if we want to um we will need to maintain our commitment to DEI and we want to maintain our commitment to DEI just because it's the right thing to do so starting with that principle in mind the the road ahead will be difficult and the first the first step is of course equipping our college and university and high school members frankly with the kinds of resources that they need everything from from advocating for them in fact we're right now soliciting feedback from our members about how these initiatives are affecting them on the ground level to then be able to to to go back to policymakers and say this is what this is this is what your students are going to to lose in these contexts and this is what it's doing to your educational institutions uh so everything from advocacy to um educational resources we're building we're developing research and educational resources aimed at shoring up DEI initiatives so that even if institutions start to become hesitant about their ability to provide we want to be a source so our our uh our view is very much to uh to maintain and accelerate our DEI efforts um as an association but then also create that that message because it's not just the institutions and the educators uh that are experiencing this it's the students and families as well and we want to make sure that in light of this court decision and in light of all that's happening now they are assured that we are still committed to DEI in in in as many different ways uh as as we are able so the the one maybe maybe future focused concern that we have is that when this decision comes down given the environment that exists at the state legislative level and even here in washington that some constituencies will be tempted to read more into this decision than is actually there so we're going to be very attentive to what the decision says and what it doesn't say and i can imagine there will be quite a bit of advocacy after the decision comes out to suggest or to fight back against the narrative that this somehow justifies a lot of what what else is going on in the states and indeed um uh we know that there is a a template uh led a piece of legislation going around in the states that would it would go even further than this decision is likely to go so we can already see that people are starting to try to to capitalize on this these cases to uh to advance their um in in my in my opinion ill ill conceived and ill considered initiatives yeah you did touch on a lot of great points that i think a lot of it's it's like you mentioned earlier it's is far beyond more than just admissions uh the on campus programs that uh protect a lot of communities of color um when they come on campus or like just in general safety um racialized and gender violence um those things are at state too um yeah thank you thank you for sharing um moving on into the next question um now we're kind of going back to some state policy I know like California Michigan they have they have banned affirmative action from their admissions process but both have actually acknowledged that they've seen a decrease in diversity on their campuses especially at their flagship and selective universities what can we learn from these states and what should federal policy policymakers know moving forward as we already know that some of these states have already banned it yeah you know another great question that the first thing that state and federal policymakers should know is that after this decision comes down we are almost guaranteed to see a decline in post-secondary enrollment among underrepresented racial and ethnic populations that's just that is what we've seen in every state that has such a ban in place um and our our legislators need to understand that that is going to happen after this court decision um the policy implication for that uh in fact I was just at a conference earlier this week in Jacksonville Florida and I noted that during this this session that I was presenting that there are no states that say we want to throttle back post-secondary enrollment every state that that talks about education and it is all of them want to see increased enrollment at the post-secondary level and we're not going to make gains under our policy goals at the state or federal level if we are systematically shutting out uh students from any segment of society but particularly from those segments that are already underrepresented and that term underrepresented is so critical here because if our goal is to improve enrollment then we can't rely on people who are already enrolling we have to go to underrepresented populations it's it's such a simple notion that it's it's tough to believe that people don't don't see the the implications of this so that is that is priority number one we are going to have to very quickly and urgently address the systemic inequities that that cause certain student populations to be underrepresented so that's going to that to me is going to suggest a broad range of of remedies uh that you know the um that the institutions that are working in the states now that have bans they're trying they're doing the best they can they have accelerated their high school visits they have gone into places that they had maybe haven't traditionally gone they have done much more intentional outreach to underrepresented populations you know they've they've worked with community-based organizations the list goes on and on but the the ability of any single institution to address this systemic inequity problem we have is going to be limited so the states and the federal government are going to need to look very carefully at policies that uh encourage underrepresented students to uh to both sort of consider and then apply to and enroll in in higher education yeah that's totally true both state and federal because um yeah it's going to come down to the states because a lot of people are also thinking like this this whole decision could be like a similar as roby wade uh situation um so yeah thank you for sharing um but i want to now just kind of spotlight some of the stuff that you all have been doing um at your organization you know what are y'all doing to ensure the higher education institutions you know provide equal access for students of color i know y'all have had recently just probably had a conference um the elevate equity 2023 and then i know y'all are also doing you know some work to actually bring students into that admissions process so i would love to you know hear more about it and then also just for the general public to know more as well yeah well in in 2022 we issued a report uh with our colleagues at the national association of student financial aid administrators that um that really took a good hard look at admissions and financial aid uh and and the context that we that we set up for this project was how would you have how would you have to rethink primarily admissions but also financial aid if your sole goal was racial equity you know it was a thought exercise and what we came out with was was i think it wasn't necessarily groundbreaking because we know lots of other people have had similar ideas but what was important about it was it was the admissions profession saying these things that that to date the admission profession itself had not necessarily uh in a in a unified way said so it said what we said and what we said was basically that we are dealing we are working in a system college admissions that was never fundamentally designed for equity uh a lot of the systems we rely on today even though they've been vastly improved over the last century were originally designed in the late 1800s and early 1900s and those systems were designed to call the very let's say cream of the crop but that's that's not really what i mean it's the they were they were designed for a very specific population of people and even inside that population they were looking then at the very like skimming across the top um financially and and otherwise so as i said we have obviously made a lot of progress since then but still it's remarkable how many processes we have kept in place just sort of tweaking and so we came up with four sort of subject area recommendations for for admissions and then two cross cutting recommendations the first of which i'll start with the cross cutting recommendations number number one institutions have to take the time to what we say get on the balcony they have done entire leadership of the of the institution needs to needs to remove itself from its day to day work and set aside time to think about how its mission-based equity goals align with its admission processes because you'd be surprised how often colleges say a lot about equity about diversity about inclusivity in their mission statements but then when it comes to admissions the practices are fundamentally not well aligned so that was that was the first cross cutting recommendation the second was as you said involve students talk to these students make sure you have underrepresented students feeding into your decision making processes and so to those two recommendations as you said we held a conference in Chicago back in February where we brought trustees presidents and senior admission deans together um and the the the output from that was invigorating that we heard from from institutional teams that they had to fly all the way to Chicago to spend time talking about the ei on their campuses that they just couldn't find the time when they were back at home uh so we'll have a forthcoming report that that outlines challenges and opportunities from from those discussions likewise we are in the process of wrapping up an ad hoc committee at NACAC that actually includes both admission and counseling members on the one hand and students on the other so it's a first of its kind endeavor for us but we'll come out of that with similarly a set of recommendations for how to involve students in these conversations so that your processes reflect the experiences of students and i know many institutions do some of that but we want to make sure that it is a constant that all institutions are constantly talking to their students and then in terms of the four subject areas we wanted institutions to to streamline the admissions process the application process or even rethink the application process because we heard from students that that that is a significant barrier and more so for underrepresented students uh second recommendation was to think about what you ask students for and why you ask for it you know good good example is the test optional movement do do we if we require tests what do we what do we learn from those tests about whether a student's going to succeed at this institution and we actually did research a few years ago that suggested that half of colleges that required tests at the time didn't do any research to figure out if the test said anything about whether the students were going to succeed so we want institutions to be thinking carefully not just about tests but about all the other things they asked for and how if they if they require this set group of things how do those things reflect equity or inequity you know so we want to like a multi-level approach to this we also thirdly wanted institutions to think about if selectivity was important to them why it was important can you reassess that and if if not if it is important if you've decided as an institution you want to be selective then what are the grounds on which you're selective you know right now these court cases are dictating that test scores and grades and and they of course are going to be important grades will always be important but these very sort of narrow numeric variables are the basis upon which most institutions are selective institutions could be free to add other variables to that it's it's within their academic rights to add other variables so we want people to think why selectivity and how are you selective and then finally we want to look at the face of the admissions office because that is what students see and we know from our students who again we worked with students not only in this ad hoc committee but as part of the original project they were students of color said that oftentimes they didn't feel represented when they looked at the admissions office that they didn't feel they connected that the admissions officers understood them so we want to be very intentional about how we arrange our admissions offices and and making sure that the admissions offices are DEI ready you know every every admission officer is DEI ready so that's that's the that's what NACAC hopes to do of course we want to advocate we know that institutions have policy levers that they can control here we know that there's institutional governance that needs to be involved sometimes and then state and federal legislatures that can also be helpful so we want to work hard with our institutions but we also want to work with with government to make sure that we are setting the system up so that it is in fact designed for equity wow um that's a lot there wow uh i'm very i'm like i don't know where to go because i was like wow i was like check box check check i was like yes yes yes and even i was thinking back when you were talking i was like i was thinking back to my own admissions process when i applied for undergrad i was like what did i do i don't i was like it's it's been about almost 15 years and i was like wow that was such a long time ago um but yes all all yes to everything that you said i think it's so important especially for like when students do go and visit the campus or go to the admissions office i never seemed to think about that because i don't i remember taking tours of you know my university and was like oh didn't even come to think like you know if you see yourself on campus um people feel more welcome and i think that just goes back to you know diversity equity and inclusion um which is one of the things i've been looking into and thinking about more deeply is about how do how does that become a basic need and how you know universities are going to be committed to d i and like you're saying it's one thing to put in your mission statement but if it's not trickling into you know other parts of your you know other parts of your institution then that that's a problem um so just taking a step back and reimagining what that admission process is going to look like i think that's probably the first step is to start with the admissions process um because that is what's you know keeping your institution running is the enrollment um wow that's a lot to go off of and thank you so much for sharing that i'm i'm just like check check check um want to get into i think more about the federal policies i know we talked a little bit earlier about state policy um but you know at new america we you know we're we're very focused on federal policy just given our location being in washington dc um what would you like congress and the white house um to know about the fallout if a front of action is overturned um what can congress do to maintain and improve access for students of color yeah you know there are a few things that come to mind and the first is going to be a more of a soft leadership approach um we met with the white house um earlier earlier this month uh and one of the things we told them is that you know there is going to there's there is a need for uh public leadership on this issue that um as i as i mentioned earlier the uh the the effects of this case are going to include a psychological effect for many americans particularly americans of color and we at knackak intend to do this but we think it's important that our elected leaders do as well and that is to send the very public message that we are still committed we are absolutely committed to diversity equity and inclusion in our educational system and limiting systemic inequities uh as as they relate to race and ethnicity so that is i think that is a it sounds kind of simple or simplistic and and and and um and obvious but it is going to play an important role uh the second the second thing that i think can be a critical role for federal policy is to in fact look for the levers that it has to both identify and alleviate systemic discriminatory effects um in fact i just saw yesterday uh the department of education intends to revive the disparate impact work that the that the office of civil rights has been has done in the past before the prior administration looking at school districts and trying to get at that systemic inequity in the k-12 system we would encourage that that the federal government look for similar similar opportunities across the educational spectrum um you know the fact that there are such systemic inequities in the college enrollment space it could be another area where we look systemically it's one thing to look at in individual institutions it's another to point out that there are systemic and potentially disparate impacts across our educational system and look for ways in which the federal uh civil rights infrastructure can be brought to bear on on that the the the third thing and these are these are large buckets we can certainly talk about them at at at more length but the third area of course and this is for me this is not a learn long-term solution as much as it is a short term is that there are programs um that can get at some of the inequities you know we start with say the college access programs that are on the books your gear up your trio um those those programs are um very oriented towards college access and have a remarkable track record for helping to improve enrollment among under underrepresented populations but they can't do it all um so you know looking at at all of your policy levers both through the higher education act and through the the elementary uh the e s s a side of things uh i when i started at nack it was the elementary and secondary education act that kind of shows you how old i am but um you know the title one money there is money in title one that can be used for college access there is uh there is the title for a programs under e s s a that that can be used for college awareness and and support for school counseling programs uh nack i gets conducted research in the past that shows working one-on-one with a school counselor increases the likelihood that a student will fill out the FAFSA by seven times and the the likelihood that a student will enroll in post-secondary education by four times um and so the the idea that we can provide one-on-one help for students particularly students of color and students from underrepresented backgrounds those are going to be really important areas where we can can bolster our our infrastructure to to help those students advance but fundamentally i do think that the one the one area where the federal government is uniquely situated is in that civil rights area that particularly with all of what's happening at the state level right now uh that we are destined to see these disparities potentially worsen for the next decade if these things if these if these if this momentum takes root in the states um and there will be significant differences between uh for lack of a better term blue states and red states and when one thing we know about the federal government's role in our policy infrastructure is that it is it is fundamentally uh an essential part of ensuring that civil rights uh for in this case for students are intact and if they're not the federal government has a has a role to act oh thank you yeah thank you for sharing um again um this was great um thank you for uh as i know it's early in the morning well it's not really early in the morning but i was like i feel like i've been fed um pretty good um thank you so much david um thank you for the work that you all are doing um again like i said myself and america we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me um about what is unfolding here um and as we wait come most likely in june we'll be on pins and needles as we're seeing how how this impact is going to look like and what the future of higher education um can be and again for those who will be watching and tuning in to this um thank you so much um and i hope you take away a lot of good learnings here today on our discussion thank you thank you dayshon for having having us and and we certainly appreciate our our work with with the new america foundation thank you