Harvard issues statement regarding Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision

Harvard University posted the following statement Thursday.

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.

We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday. So too are the abiding values that have enabled us — and every great educational institution — to pursue the high calling of educating creative thinkers and bold leaders, of deepening human knowledge, and of promoting progress, justice, and human flourishing.

We affirm that:

• Because the teaching, learning, research and creativity that bring progress and change require debate and disagreement, diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence.

• To prepare leaders for a complex world, Harvard must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience. No part of what makes us who we are could ever be irrelevant.

• Harvard must always be a place of opportunity, a place whose doors remain open to those to whom they had long been closed, a place where many will have the chance to live dreams their parents or grandparents could not have dreamed.

For almost a decade, Harvard has vigorously defended an admissions system that, as two federal courts ruled, fully complied with longstanding precedent. In the weeks and months ahead, drawing on the talent and expertise of our Harvard community, we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.

The heart of our extraordinary institution is its people. Harvard will continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world. To our students, faculty, staff, researchers, and alumni — past, present and future — who call Harvard your home, please know that you are, and always will be, Harvard. Your remarkable contributions to our community and the world drive Harvard’s distinction. Nothing today has changed that.

Sincerely,
Lawrence S. Bacow President, Harvard University
Alan M. Garber Provost, Harvard University
Meredith Weenick
Executive Vice President, Harvard University
Claudine Gay Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences President-elect, Harvard University
Tomiko Brown-Nagin Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Nancy Coleman Dean, Division of Continuing Education and University Extension
George Q. Daley Dean, Harvard Medical School
Srikant Datar
Dean, Harvard Business School
Emma Dench Dean, Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Francis J. Doyle III Dean, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Douglas Elmendorf Dean, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
William V. Giannobile Dean, Harvard School of Dental Medicine
David N. Hempton Dean, Harvard Divinity School
Rakesh Khurana Dean, Harvard College
Bridget Terry Long Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education
John F. Manning Dean, Harvard Law School
Sarah M. Whiting Dean, Graduate School of Design
Michelle A. Williams Dean, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health