How Faculty Banned Affirmative Action

• In Event: Conservative Rollback of Civil Rights Era Legal Protections

Abstract

That universities create progressive public policies is not new in contemporary scholarship on American political development, indeed universities in the mid-twentieth century led the way on innovating affirmative action policies in higher education. We think of conservative legal mobilization as effectively sprouting from the judiciary, public interest law firms, and professional organizations. But universities have also sourced conservative ideas on race and public policy too. University faculty have been pivotal in constitutionalism and equality, pushing racially conservative language into state constitutions. The rights consciousness story of “colorblind” mobilization is one of anti-classification and conflicting racial orders. Yet, in movements to ban affirmative action, conservative faculty borrowed from symbols in the Civil Rights Movement, attempting to graft their ideas about Equal Protection onto a broader popular appeal. This article aims to bring university faculty into the conversations on rights consciousness and legal mobilization. Through archival research and interviews with the faculty activists, this article explores the first two cases of anti-affirmative action constitutional amendments in California and Michigan. Faculty originated restrictive racial policies in higher education and changed constitutional language on equality. University faculty led campaigns that amended state constitutions, cutting off avenues for rights expansion and fueling movements towards “colorblind” interpretation of constitutional equality guarantees.

Author

• Lauren Foley, Western Michigan University