Abigail Fisher, a white student from Sugarland, Texas, sued the University of Texas after she failed to receive admission. In “Fisher v. Texas,” she claims she was turned down even though her application was just as strong as minority students who got in. Sometime in the fall, this case will be heard by the Supreme Court, the first affirmative action case heard in nearly a decade. With more conservative justices on the bench, the case could overturn the 2003 ruling that allows universities to take race into account during admissions as long as they didn’t quantify their process. Richard Kahlenberg is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and the author of “The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action.” Lee Bollinger is president of Columbia University in New York.
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