Light and Rand, p.29
Lawrence, advocate a diversity rationale more firmly rooted in “the world outside”
71
the
university classroom. There, rather than lively and engaged class discussion, diversity’s most
important benefits are the integration of elite power structures and continuing efforts against
racism and social inequality.
72
This approach has some support in the Grutter Court’s rationale,
most notably in its emphasis on postgraduate employment, leadership, and citizenship.
73
As the
Court asserted, “Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic
life of our Nation is essential, if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.”
74
With this focus, diversity’s benefits – even without a critical mass in the classroom – are
more apparent at UND. Students of color may not have come to UND, or considered college or
law school at all without UND’s recruitment efforts, including tuition waivers and stipends.
75
They are here, and they are receiving both the skills and the credentials necessary to succeed
individually as well as to populate, participate in, and ultimately transform elite power structures
in society. This view would encourage schools like UND to continue, or even expand,
affirmative action efforts.
We believe that the cost-benefit approach implicitly utilized by the Grutter Court
inappropriately may minimize the societal benefits that stem from even less-than-critical-mass
diversity, as it focuses primarily on racial diversity as an aspect of the broader diversity that
71
Jack Greenberg, Diversity, the University, and the World Outside, 103 Colum. L. Rev. 1610 (2003) [hereinafter
Greenberg, The World Outside]; see also Jack Greenberg, Affirmative Action in Higher Education: Confronting the
Condition and the Theory, 43 B.C. L. Rev. 521, 522-25 (2002).
72
Greenberg, The World Outside, supra note 71, at 1621 (advocating a focus on “the condition of society and what
affirmative action can do to help fix it”); Charles R. Lawrence III, Each Other’s Harvest: Diversity’s Deeper
Meaning, 31 U.S.F. L. Rev. 757, 775-78 (1997) (arguing that diversity assists in “disestablishing white supremacist
structures and ideologies”); Rhonda V. Magee Andrews, Affirmative Action After Grutter: Reflections on a
Tortured Death, Imagining a Humanity-Affirming Reincarnation, 63 La. L. Rev. 705 (2003) (proposing a remedial
rationale that incorporates racism’s denial of human dignity).
73
Grutter, 123 S. Ct. at 2340-41. As Greenberg notes, however, this aspect of the Court’s diversity rationale is
perhaps more potential than precedent. Greenberg, The World Outside, supra note 71, at 1621.
74
Grutter, 123 S. Ct. at 2340-41.
75
Affirmative action in financial aid is particularly important to furthering long-range goals of diversity. See, e.g.,
Bell, supra note 65 (arguing that the Grutter Court’s diversity rationale does little to overcome the inequitable
distribution of privilege).
Convention