Denver, Colo., Jul 10, 2023 / 08:44 am (CNA).
The U.S. bishops have reaffirmed the importance of education access for marginalized racial groups after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in higher education.
“Education is a gift, an opportunity, and an important aspect of our democracy that is not always within the reach of all, especially racial and ethnic groups who find themselves on the margins,” Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry of Chicago, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, said in a July 7 statement. “It is our hope that our Catholic institutions of higher learning will continue to find ways to make education possible and affordable for everyone, regardless of their background.”
Perry cited St. Katharine Drexel, a pioneer of Catholic education: “If we wish to serve God and love our neighbor as well, we must manifest our joy in the service we render to him and them. Let us open wide our hearts. It is joy which invites us. Press forward and fear nothing,” Drexel said.
Perry noted Drexel was quoted in the title of the U.S. bishops’ 2018 pastoral letter “Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love.”
The June 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard concerned the affirmative action programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
However, the decision will impact all universities across the country, including Catholic institutions.
In the 6-3 decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the nation’s highest court effectively struck down public and private universities’ ability to include race-based affirmative action in their admissions decisions.
For decades, many universities have used affirmative action in their admissions programs to increase minority representation on their campuses. However, some have argued that affirmative action promotes the admission of certain ethnic minorities at the expense of others, often negatively impacting Asian students.
In the ruling, Roberts wrote that “Harvard’s consideration of race has led to an 11.1% decrease in the number of Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard.”
Leaders of numerous individual Catholic universities strongly criticized the decision, as did the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU). The association, founded in 1899, has dozens of Catholic institutions as members and describes itself as the “voice of Catholic higher education.”
In a June 29 statement, the ACCU said the decision ignores “the more-than-apparent effects of continued racism in our society.” It objected that the decision undermines higher education’s voluntary efforts to solve the “social evil” of racism “in a society that provides too few solutions.”
The statement added that the ACCU would seek to act within the boundaries of the Supreme Court decision and continue to be guided by Catholic social teaching “to create paths by which those in society who do not have opportunity find it at our institutions.”
Georgetown University, a Jesuit school in the District of Columbia, led a coalition of Catholic universities and colleges that filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of affirmative action in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case. The brief was joined by The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and 55 other Catholic universities and colleges from across the country.
The brief argued for the “allowance of the use of race as one factor among others in college and university admissions policies.” It suggested affirmative action was part of religious freedom, saying “the free exercise of religion provides additional constitutional weight to the compelling interest in racial diversity in admissions for the Catholic institutions of higher learning.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the brief in her dissenting opinion.
Georgetown University President John DeGioia issued a June 29 statement decrying the court’s decision. He vowed that the university would “remain committed” to “recruit, enroll, and support students from all backgrounds to ensure an enriching educational experience.”
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We read that ““It is our hope that our Catholic institutions of higher learning will continue to find ways to make education possible and affordable [!] for everyone,..”
Not commenting here on admissions policies, but not sure, either, what un-affordable might mean. The average tuition for “affordable” Catholic universities and colleges is $35,770, and $24,094 after financial aid. https://www.accunet.org/data.html
And as for ensuring “an enriching educational experience”…
…not much “inclusivity” given for the 1990 Ex Corde Ecclesiae addressing the very meaning of scientific and technical research, social life and culture. The document reads, “…what is at stake is the very meaning of the human person” (italics in the original). Not sure, here, how to fix the centrifugal curricula, but pretty sure that the 1967 Land O’Lakes Declaration was “not the best deal possible” (as the Vatican now says, too, of the 2018 China “Provisional Agreement!”). As with education now seemingly bent into a social experiment, much as is the equally distracted military establishment.
Does awarding attendance as a prize all go back to awarding prizes for attendance, rather than for performance? To a culture of equalizing grade-inflation? And then to “data-driven” higher (?) education–overspecialized, esoteric, and politicized, multiversity turfs. Each with a top heavy administrative superstructure symbiotic with each micro-academic silo. Like even the doctor-patient (?) medical profession with its “providers” and “consumers”?
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The military-industrial complex, the medical-industrial complex…and the educational-industrial/banking and indentured-student complex.
Affordable and enriching?
I wish the Catholic Bishops would stop sticking their noses where they don’t belong. School admissions is not within the realm of a Bishop’s responsibility, except for his own catholic schools. “Marginalization” ceased in the US many decades ago. Between affirmative action in schooling and employment, quotas and public benefits of many kinds, I doubt a genuinely “marginalized” POC can be found in the US. We have minority CEO’s , astronauts, doctors, lawyers, stock brokers, teachers, senators, presidents, etc, etc.They are NOT, as Senator Tim Scott declared recently on TV, simply an exception. In my opinion if you can’t succeed as a minority in the US, the blame falls on you.Interesting this case hinged on discrimination against asians only. It would appear that discrimination against whites has the govt stamp of approval.
South Africa has institutionalized anti-white racism in the years following a great deal of political turmoil to try to bring equality.. It has done untold political, civil and economic damage, and all but destroyed the country. Maybe that is why Elon Musk lives HERE.Two points to note: One, you can’t un-do history, regardless of the actions you take. Two, racism is ALWAYS morally wrong, no matter who it is practised against.
I have to admit I’m baffled by the Catholic colleges’ reaction to the Court’s judgement.
P.S. And the bishops’ concurrence too.