The following remarks were delivered by 2024 Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize winner Edward Blum at Encounter Books’ Annual Gala in Washington, DC on November 13, 2024.
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Before I begin my remarks, I’d like to recognize two groups that the ancient Greek poet Archilochus classified as foxes and hedgehogs. “A fox knows many things,” he said, “but a hedgehog knows one big thing.”
First, let me recognize some who know one big thing—my fellow hedgehogs, the Board of Directors of Students for Fair Admissions, all of whom are in attendance tonight: Eva Guo, Joe Zhou, Richard Fisher, and Abigail Fisher. Many of you will remember Abby from her two trips to the US Supreme Court challenging the University of Texas’s race-based admissions policies. She stepped forward when dozens of other students just like her would not. Abby is a courageous young woman.
More on courage—and the diminishing quantities of it—later.
Joining us also is a table of very talented foxes, those knowing many things—the men and women of Consovoy McCarthy, the law firm that litigated the SFFA cases. In 2014, they examined Harvard’s admissions practices, cracked their knuckles, and sued. Every one of them has the heart and bite of a lion; I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
Sadly, one of the most remarkable lawyers at Consovoy McCarthy, Will Consovoy, died before the SFFA opinion was released. He, more than anyone else, was the legal energy behind the lawsuit. We miss him. May his memory be for a blessing.
And finally, I want to recognize a foxy hedgehog: my wife of forty-three years, Lark Blum. All of the mishegoss—that’s Yiddish for “trouble”—that I have endeavored to create over the last thirty-five years has been lovingly encouraged by her.
This is not just a legal or political issue; it is a moral issue. It is about the kind of society we want to be, the values we want to uphold, and the future we want to create for our children and grandchildren.
I stand here tonight with immense gratitude and humility, honored to be the recipient of Encounter Books’ Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for Academic Freedom. This recognition is not only a personal privilege but also an acknowledgment of the cause to which so many of us have dedicated our time, efforts, and passions.
First and foremost, I want to extend my sincere thanks to Roger Kimball and the team at Encounter Books for this incredible honor. Your commitment to the preservation of intellectual rigor and the free exchange of ideas is a unique beacon in today’s world of media and publishing. You have consistently published works that challenge the status quo and, importantly, encourage thoughtful debate. To receive this award from such a respected institution is truly humbling.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, in whose name this award is given, was a woman of extraordinary intellect, courage, and conviction. I had the privilege to be in residence at the American Enterprise Institute offices here in Washington, DC, when her office was there as well. We spoke a few times and I, wisely, listened much more than I spoke.
She understood, in every one of her roles, the perils of complacency in the face of unfairness and the necessity of battling for what is right.
When I founded Students for Fair Admissions in 2014, it was with a clear vision and a simple, singular purpose: to end the use of race as an admissions factor at all institutions of higher education. It was—and still is—a mission born out of a fundamental belief in the principles of meritocracy and individual achievement.
SFFA’s guiding principle is that race-based admissions policies, no matter how well-intentioned, are unfair, deeply polarizing, and illegal. These policies have led to the systematic discrimination of certain groups, particularly Asian-Americans, in favor of others.
This is not just a legal or political issue; it is a moral issue. It is about the kind of society we want to be, the values we want to uphold, and the future we want to create for our children and grandchildren.
In recent years, we have seen the debate over affirmative action intensify, and not just in college admissions. Today, what Chief Justice John Roberts called in a 2006 racial-gerrymandering case “the sordid business of divvying us up by race” is ubiquitous. Hiring, promoting, internships, fellowships, contracting, and voting districts are often predicated on skin color and ethnic heritage. As a result, most of our nation has learned that race preference is the soil in which racial polarization grows.
As our most competitive colleges and universities come to terms, or not, with the SFFA opinion, it is essential to remember that our goal is not to diminish the number of racial minorities on campus or to undermine the progress that has been made toward equal opportunity. Rather, our goal is to ensure that the means by which we achieve these ends are just, fair, and consistent with the principles enshrined in our civil-rights laws and Constitution.
The legal battles that SFFA and its sister organization, the Project on Fair Representation, have undertaken over the years, particularly our case against Harvard, have been driven by this very conviction.
Unfortunately, it is no surprise that these efforts have been met with significant resistance from nearly every corner of the higher-education world. I do not know of a single college leader who publicly applauded the Harvard opinion.
Nevertheless, SFFA’s lawsuits have garnered overwhelming support from individuals and organizations across the country who share our belief in the importance of meritocracy and colorblind admissions policies. In the culture war this nation has fought over wokeness, the SFFA opinion was the like the Allied landing on Normandy Beach.
Truly, the easiest part of my job during the last ten years has been to convince our fellow citizens that race should not be used to determine whether a young man or woman is accepted or rejected from a college or university. In dozens of polls since the SFFA opinion was released, significant majorities of Americans of all races have supported the outcome. I’m out on a limb when I say this, but I’ll go there anyway: the opinion in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard is one of the most popular opinions in the recent history of Supreme Court jurisprudence. It has the approval of nearly 70 percent of our fellow citizens.
...race should not be used to determine whether a young man or woman is accepted or rejected from a college or university.
That high approval rating, though, did not mean it was easy for student members to step up to join SFFA over the years so that our organization could remain, in the language of the courts, “in good standing.”
Let me now recount to you a little-known sidebar of the Harvard litigation. It is emblematic of the dedication of the SFFA members who, because of their courage, have changed the course of higher education and, it is to be hoped, American jurisprudence.
Imagine you are seventeen or eighteen years old. While in your senior year of high school, you were rejected from Harvard and joined SFFA as a “standing member,” and you are now in your first few days as a freshman at, for instance, Vanderbilt, Rice, Texas A&M, or Northwestern.
Further imagine that after a few weeks of classes, you are compelled to spend two long days with SFFA’s lawyers preparing to be deposed by a team of Harvard’s lawyers, and then relentlessly deposed by that bloodthirsty team for four or five hours. The first group of students who joined SFFA knew this could be their fate. I warned them. The legal team warned them. Nonetheless, they stayed in the fight, knowing that they would never benefit personally.
This took courage—a quality Harvard’s admissions officers tended to find lacking in Asian-Americans, as SSFA learned from the personality scores assigned to all applicants during our legal battle.
What SFFA’s lawyers and I witnessed in each of these young men and women—and of course their parents, many of whom fled the tyranny of Communist China—was an act of quiet resistance to the attacks against meritocracy, diligence, and excellence.
There is a young man here tonight who was at the forefront of our fight against Harvard: Harrison Chen. Courage is the most important virtue, and Harrison has it.
In dozens of admissions offices for undergraduate, postgraduate, law, and medical schools throughout the country, the worshipers of intersectionality are experimenting with novel racial proxies to achieve what racial classifications and preferences once accomplished.
Now that racial classifications and preferences have been formally declared unconstitutional, real educational reform for K–12 might be addressed. And just as importantly, perhaps more so, real and necessary changes in family, societal, and institutional values might be introduced as well.
Students for Fair Admissions will not let this victory go to our collective heads. In dozens of admissions offices for undergraduate, postgraduate, law, and medical schools throughout the country, the worshipers of intersectionality are experimenting with novel racial proxies to achieve what racial classifications and preferences once accomplished. Our legal lions have their litigation sights on a handful of schools that seem to be flouting the law.
As Winston Churchill said in 1942 after a significant victory during World War II, this movement recognizes that we are not at the beginning of the end, but rather at the end of the beginning.
It took ten years for SFFA—our lawyers, members, and supporters—to begin the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds us together as a nation.
Let me conclude by sharing with you what I think is one of the most consequential and, unsurprisingly, overlooked benefits of the end of affirmative action. It is this: every student admitted to MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Amherst, and many other competitive colleges and universities will know that he or she was not accepted merely to provide targeted color optics to campuses.
The urgency of this issue was best articulated many years ago in Justice Clarence Thomas’s fervent dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 University of Michigan affirmative-action lawsuit that allowed racial preferences in admissions in order to achieve racial diversity. He wrote that when racial minorities “take positions in the highest places of government, industry, or academia, it is an open question today whether their skin color played a part in their advancement.”
The question itself is the stigma—because asking the question unfairly marks minorities who would succeed without racial preferences.
It took ten years for SFFA—our lawyers, members, and supporters—to begin the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds us together as a nation.
As it is said, the impossible takes longer.
Thank you.
Edward Blum is the president of Students for Fair Admissions, a membership organization whose mission is to eliminate racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in school admissions.
