https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/nas-president-peter-wood-addresses-the-pending-racial-preferences-cases
The following are remarks that NAS president Peter Wood presented at a meeting of “Oasis,” an informal group of academics and intellectuals that periodically gathers at the faculty club at New York University. Dr. Wood was invited to comment on the pending U.S. Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. The National Association of Scholars filed an amicus brief in the case on the side of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., which represents Asian students who argue that Harvard has unlawfully discriminated against them on the basis of race.
Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College is scheduled for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of this month, on Monday the 31st, Halloween. It is a matter of pure coincidence that this month has also brought the release of Halloween Ends, the thirteenth movie in the world’s most commercially successful horror franchise. For those whose filmic education stopped with Ingmar Bergman or Jean-Luc Godard, Halloween tells the tale of the rambunctious Michael Meyers, who likes to murder babysitters on October 31, generally in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Babysitter Laurie Strode, played by the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, has a knack for escaping Mr. Meyers’ knife. One or the other or both of them die at the end of the movies, only to spring back to screen life in the next sequel.
I bring this up, of course, because the parallel is uncanny. Here is a story about a terrifying and seemingly unstoppable force that destroys the lives of young people with impunity. It is met with heroic resistance and is seemingly doomed to be defeated once and for all, only to rise again. It is no small matter that Mr. Meyers owes his longevity to state officials who, over and over again, fail to do their duty. He escapes from an insane asylum, the morgue, incineration, and numerous other seemingly terminal destinations. Racial preferences in college admissions owe their longevity to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, but of course not just her.
I am among those that hope and expect that racial preferences in higher education will end, if not on Halloween proper, at some point in our lifetimes. If next June the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions, of course, that decision will not mean an end to racial preferences anytime soon. But it will be a significant step in the right direction, and it will help those of us who seek to bring more and more pressure on colleges and universities to finish for once and all the Meyers-esque career of racial preferences.