Announcements

Bowen and Rudenstine Article Appears in Chronicle of Higher Education

"Race-Sensitive Admissions: Back to Basics," an article by William G. Bowen, president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Neil L. Rudenstine, chairman of ARTstor, appears in the February 7 issue of The Chronicle Review, the magazine of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Click here to see a PDF file of the article with footnotes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in early April in two cases in which white applicants sued the University of Michigan, charging that the university's admission policies, in which race is considered as one among many factors, are unconstitutional. The piece is intended to help inform the debate on this extremely important and contentious issue by providing a list of propositions the authors hope will clear up some misconceptions, in part by marshalling evidence.

Both authors have been intimately involved in the affirmative action debate for more than 35 years-first at Princeton, where Bowen served as president and Rudenstine as provost; at Harvard, where Rudenstine was president; and at the Mellon Foundation. Bowen is the co-author, with Derek Bok, of The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton University Press, 1998). Rudenstine's extended essay "Diversity and Learning" (The President´s Report: 1993-1995, Harvard University) focuses on the value of diversity in higher education from the mid-19th century to the present.