The Cabining of Affirmative Action in College and University Admissions, 1963-1978

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13. Navigating College Preparation and Admission Processes

Abstract

Whether and how the postwar demands of the Black freedom struggle were accommodated by American political and legal institutions varied from one area to another.

Initially, higher education was robustly responsive. Following a surge of civil rights activism in 1963, many college and university presidents encouraged various types of affirmative action in admissions, citing compensatory and diversity rationales. Additionally, affirmative action enjoyed the support of some Republicans and moderates, not just Democrats and liberals. That changed in 1978. Not only did the range of permissible policies and rationales shrink with Bakke, but the political support for affirmative action took on a clear partisan and ideological pattern.

What accounts for this narrowing? This paper draws on archival research in the Agnew and Nixon papers to argue that it reflects nothing so consistently as the changing fortunes of conservatives within the Republican Party.

From the early-1960s to the mid-1970s, Republicans disagreed among themselves on questions of civil rights. Conservatives the likes of Reagan and Agnew came out against affirmative action, but liberal and moderate Republicans defended it, including Rockefeller, Milliken, and several of Nixon’s appointees. Nixon himself did not take a consistent stand.

By 1978, however, conservatives found themselves with the upper hand, and the numerical and ideological relevance of liberal and moderate Republicans had diminished. They had either switched parties, lost elections, aged out, or retired. As a result, Bakke became a national issue at precisely the moment when the ideological sorting of the broader GOP was nearly complete, and conservatives on the Supreme Court claimed just enough votes to profoundly limit the scope of affirmative action.

Hence it was that affirmative action was locked into a narrow pattern of political and legal accommodation that ended only with SFFA in 2023.

Authors

• Anthony S. Chen, Northwestern University

• Lisa Michele Stulberg, New York University