Via Roger Clegg and
Discriminations, I see this interesting
interview by the president of Columbia U., Lee Bollinger, who was the named defendant in the Grutter and Gratz affirmative action cases of 2003, of Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. As you'll recall, Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion seemed to put some sort of 25-year timeline on affirmative action, but the Attorney General is having none of that:
One of Bollinger’s questions concerned the United States Supreme Court’s decision earlier this week to reconsider affirmative action. Bollinger was involved in defending affirmative action when the court declared it constitutional in a landmark 2003 case, and he said on Thursday that the court’s decision to revisit the issue is “ominous.”
Holder expressed support for affirmative action, saying that he “can’t actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.”
“Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices,” Holder said. “The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin ... When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”
As you'll also recall, the justification given for affirmative action in the majority opinion was not compensation for the historic effects of slavery and Jim Crow, but the benefits that white students gain from "diversity," from the free-wheeling, wide-open, politically incorrect intellectual atmosphere fostered on campus by letting in some students because of their racial/ethnic backgrounds. But, in the Attorney General's view, diversity is about people of color getting benefits. And we have not yet begun to fight!
