Thomas, J., concurring
shown that purportedly benign discrimination may be pernicious, and discriminators may go to great lengths to hide and perpetuate their unlawful conduct. Take, for example, the university respondents here. Harvard’s “holistic” admissions policy began in the 1920s when it was developed to exclude Jews. See M. Synnott, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admission at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1970, pp. 58–59, 61, 69, 73–74 (2010). Based on de facto quotas that Harvard quietly implemented, the proportion of Jews in Harvard’s freshman class declined from 28% as late as 1925 to just 12% by 1933. J. Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton 172 (2005). During this same period, Harvard played a prominent role in the eugenics movement. According to then-President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, excluding Jews from Harvard would help maintain admissions opportunities for Gentiles and perpetuate the purity of the Brahmin race—New England’s white, Protestant upper crust. See D. Okrent, The Guarded Gate 309, and n. * (2019).
UNC also has a checkered history, dating back to its time as a segregated university. It admitted its first black undergraduate students in 1955—but only after being ordered to do so by a court, following a long legal battle in which UNC sought to keep its segregated status. Even then, UNC did not turn on a dime: The first three black students admitted as undergraduates enrolled at UNC but ultimately earned their bachelor’s degrees elsewhere. See M. Beauregard, Column: The Desegregation of UNC, The Daily Tar Heel, Feb. 16, 2022. To the extent past is prologue, the university respondents’ histories hardly recommend them as trustworthy arbiters of whether racial discrimination is necessary to achieve educational goals.
Of course, none of this should matter in any event; courts have an independent duty to interpret and uphold the Constitution that no university’s claimed interest may override.
