University of Michigan philosophy professor Carl Cohen opposed his university’s race preference policies back when they came under legal attack in the late 90s — the litigation that ended in 2003 with the Supreme Court’s decisions in Gratz and Grutter. (The former case, involving the university’s undergrad admission policy, said that outright quotas were not permissible, but in the latter, the majority held that the law school’s “holistic” admissions policy where race could be a “plus factor” was permissible.)

Grutter was a bad decision, full of weak reasoning and silly dicta like Justice O’Connor’s expressed hope that we wouldn’t need racial preferences in 25 years. Fortunately, it didn’t put an end to the battle against racial preferences, which have continued at the ballot box (a number of states have voted to end racial preferences, including Michigan) and in the federal courts. In its new term, the Court will hear Fisher v. Texas for the second time, and one possible outcome is that the Court will reverse Grutter and say that public institutions cannot prefer one applicant to another just on account of the former’s ancestry.

That would suit Professor Cohen very well, and he explains why in today’s Pope Center piece.

Crucially, Cohen does not believe that there are any true “educational benefits” that come from using preferences to create a more “diverse” student body. That belief was the key to Justice O’Connor’s opinion in Grutter, but it was and is ill-founded. He points to a study done by Lipset, Rothman, and Nevitte on the effects of increased “diversity,” and their conclusion was that the more the “diversity” at a school, the less satisfied students were with educational quality and the work ethic of their peers.

Cohen also writes that the diversity has educational benefits claim is mistaken based on his long experience. “As I have learned in decades of teaching at the University of Michigan, it is always the merit of the ideas discussed and defended that makes classes in philosophy enriching and worthwhile. The color or the character of the persons who present them are of no consequence.”

Great point: If America is to progress, it’s important that we get over the notion that some students (or people in general) have more valuable insights than others just because of their racial heritage.

Cohen also points to the great counterweight to the supposed educational benefits of using race preferences, namely the way they work against the best educational interests of many of the minority students who supposedly benefit.

In short, there is no “compelling state interest” that justifies the use of racial preferences. If anything, there is a compelling interest in evaluating students in a color-blind manner, just as the 14th Amendment requires.

For readers who want Professor Cohen’s thorough treatment of the University of Michigan’s battle over preferences, I recommend his 2014 book A Conflict of Principles.

Or if you want a solid introduction to logic, try his book on that (with Irving Copi.)