Ohio GOP Senator JD Vance demanded 10 colleges and universities preserve their communications after their “expressed open hostility” to the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action ruling.
Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action at institutions of higher learning is unconstitutional in a case involving Harvard University’s application policies that adversely impacted Asian students’ admissions. Schools can, however, weigh race as a factor if the applicant has discussed how his or her race has impacted their life.
Following the decision, several presidents of top American colleges — including the entirety of Ivy League universities — announced their institutions’ commitments to “diversity” on campus in light of the ruling.
“Statements along these lines are particularly disconcerting in light of recent revelations that proponents of unlawful affirmative action sometimes practice ‘unstated affirmative action,’ in which hiring and admissions decisions are made on the basis of race in a covert and unspoken way, even when the relevant decisionmaker is placed under oath in a deposition,” Vance wrote.
The Ohio Republican included statements from each of the presidents of the 10 schools after the Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action.
“Princeton President [Christopher] Eisgruber complained that the Court’s decision was ‘unwelcome and disappointing’ and vowed to pursue ‘diversity . . . with energy, persistence, and a determination to succeed despite the restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court in its regrettable decision today,’” Vance recounted.
The Ohio senator said that he did not need to remind the university presidents “of the ugly history of defiance and lawlessness that followed other landmark Supreme Court rulings demanding racial equality in education.”
Vance noted the late Democratic Virginia Gov. Thomas B. Stanley’s response to the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision “by pledging to show ‘the rest of the country [that] racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South’ and by vowing to organize ‘massive resistance’ in the Southern States.”
“Violence and racial animosity ensued,” Vance warned.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Fox News Digital reached out to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Oberlin College and Kenyon College for comment on the letter.
A spokesperson for Harvard pointed Fox News Digital to the university’s statement after the decision where the school said it “will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.”