Conservatives attack affirmative action in college newspaper ads p.37

Full-page ads in 15 college newspapers across the country last week attacked affirmative action in student admissions, an issue now being debated in the nation's courts.
The Center for Individual Rights, a conservative public policy law firm in Washington, spent between $30,000 and $40,000 on the ads, says Terence Pell, a senior counselor at the firm. A range of schools was chosen, from the most competitive private schools to public schools.
Pell's ad campaign, which has the strong backing of former Education Secretary William J. Bennett, is aimed at colleges that practice what he views as illegal race-based admissions.
The center's view is challenged, although not in ads, by Americans for a Fair Chance, a coalition of six leading civil rights legal defense organizations, including the NAACP-Legal Defense Fund. The group's executive director, RenÉ Redwood, calls the ads "misleading because they oversimplify the admissions process."
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also criticized the ads.
"We strongly disagree with the interpretation of the law proffered by the Center for Individual rights," says Jonathan Alger, counsel for the professors group. "They are ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, which is still the law of the land. It says that diversity that contributes to the robust exchange of ideas on campus can constitute a compelling interest in higher education, and therefore that race may be considered as a factor in student admissions."
The ads encourage students to request the firm's handbooks, which discuss the law on racial preferences and how students can find out if their schools comply with it.
The Center for Individual Rights has worked on various affirmative action cases, including the Hopwood case in which a white student sued the state of Texas after being denied admission to the University of Texas. Since an appeals court ruled in the student's favor in 1996, Texas, Louisiana and, Mississippi have been barred from considering race in college admissions, according to Pell.
AAUP's Alger disputes Pell's view, contending, "The Center for Individual Rights is looking at some of the recent lower court decisions and extrapolating from those cases as though the Supreme Court decision had been overturned." He says the Supreme Court refused to review the 1996 Hopwood decision. The University of Texas, which was the defendant in the case, has filed an appeal, and AAUP plans to file an amicus brief, says Alger.
Pell's center is pursuing similar cases in Washington state, Michigan, and Alabama. In Alabama, the center represents an African-American student who was denied admission to a predominantly black school that was seeking more white students.
"They're our audience," Pell says of college students. "The best way to reach students is through the newspapers they read."
The ads instruct students to call a toll-free number to get the handbooks or read them on the Internet.

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