Top of Mind: SCOTUS, SCOTUS, and more SCOTUS

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Minding the Campus <contact@nas.org>

To: "add1dda@aol.com" <add1dda@aol.com>

Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 03:02:27 PM EDT

Subject: Top of Mind: SCOTUS, SCOTUS, and more SCOTUS

Plus mineral rights, a safe space, and more

Top of Mind: SCOTUS, SCOTUS, and more SCOTUS Plus mineral rights, a safe space, and more Dear Friend,   Happy belated Independence Day, Minding the Campus readers! As we clean off our grills and return to work, there's plenty of higher ed news to discuss. Of course, most of it—but not all—is SCOTUS, SCOTUS, and more SCOTUS.   Even our subterranean neighbors—you know, the ones who live under a rock—heard about the two higher-ed-related Supreme Court rulings announced last week. I discuss MTC's coverage of them below, so I won't rehearse the basics here, but to say they have the media in a frenzy would be the understatement of the summer. The student loan decision, for example, has invoked a level of weeping and teeth-gnashing that is both mind-boggling and completely unsurprising. "The Supreme Court just proved the American Dream isn't for black people," declares a Newsweek contributor. "I have no hope," said one college graduate interviewed by the Washington Post. Others are "skipping meals, moving in with parents, [and] panicking over money," reports the Los Angeles Times.   In other words, graduates' collective hair is on fire because—gasp!—they'll have to pay back the debts they agreed to pay back. Now, I don't mean to sound so callous. I, too, owe a modest amount of student debt, and I may have been tempted to take the funny money were SCOTUS to have ruled in favor of the plan. But many—the vast majority, I would guess—of our weepers and teeth-gnashers would be utterly unwilling to do what it takes to lower the cost of college if given the chance. Instead, some are planning a debt strike. Others are holding out hope for Loan Forgiveness 2.0, which the Biden administration announced mere hours after the Supreme Court's ruling was released (hint: it's bad news).   Meanwhile, Harvard is back in the hot seat after a brief intermission, as a civil rights complaint seeks a federal investigation into its legacy admissions practices. The complaint alleges that the university's legacy admissions give an unfair leg up to the children of alumni, most of whom are white. And Ohio's wide-ranging SB 83 has failed to advance, and is now on hold until at least September. Not to worry: The bill's primary sponsor, Jerry Cirino, assures us that "it's not dead by any means."   Now, on to this week's articles. Articles of the Week "The Beginning of the End for Racial Preferences" by Wenyuan Wu and "SCOTUS' Loan Forgiveness Ruling and the Path Forward" by Andrew Gillen – 7/3/23 "Wait," you might be thinking, "Is that a typo? Articles of the Week, plural?" That's right. After the double whammy of SCOTUS decisions last week, I just couldn't pick one piece to feature. And these aren't any old decisions—Minding the Campus and the National Association of Scholars (NAS) have fought against racial preferences in college admissions from time immemorial, and we vehemently opposed student loan forgiveness when Biden's plan was but a twinkle in his eye. And so, we're going to take a little victory lap this week, knowing full well that our work in these areas is far from over.   First up, we have a breakdown of SCOTUS's racial preferences ruling by none other than our resident expert on the subject: Wenyuan Wu. Dr. Wu knows a thing or two about affirmative action in American higher education, given her role as executive director of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and her tireless advocacy for merit, merit, and more merit. In this piece, she gladly echoes Justice Thomas's proclamation that "the Constitution prevails," but she's also no Pollyanna. Wu knows that race-obsessed colleges and universities will fight tooth and nail to circumvent this decision, "through ostensibly race-neutral alternatives that still amount to preferences, through the anti-merit test-blind movement, and through the continued ideological capture of America's young minds." "Advocacy for equal opportunity needs to be sustained after the ruling," she writes, "which marks the beginning of the end for a practice that so patently opposes the touchstone of the American experiment …"   Andrew Gillen takes a similar tack in his analysis of the student loan forgiveness ruling: we should celebrate the decision, but … In this case, Gillen fully agrees with the six-justice majority that Biden's student loan forgiveness plan far exceeds the Education Secretary's authority and runs afoul of the major questions doctrine. However, he fears that the case made it before the Court due to a "strange fluke of history"—the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority's position as a state-government-created student loan servicer—a fluke that may make it difficult for future student-loan challenges to establish standing. Ultimately, he writes, "the only long-term solution to this problem is to get the government out of the business of making student loans."   All in all, let's clink our champagne glasses and applaud these rulings. But don't tarry too long—there's plenty of work yet to be done. Click below to read the two articles. Read Wu's Article Read Gillen's Article