Six expert panelists debated affirmative action before an audience of more than 175 students at the law school Friday afternoon in a discussion filled with heated exchanges between both debaters and audience members.
The panelists used Hopwood v. Texas, last spring's circuit court case that ended affirmative action in Texas public institutions, as a springboard for the topic. The discussion then developed into a debate with Duke English professor Stanley Fish leading the support for preferential selection programs for minorities, while professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas Law School and Dinesh D'Souza of the American Enterprise Institute led the criticism of these initiatives.
"Race can't be used as a proxy for the disadvantaged," Graglia said. "Blacks who apply to institutions of higher education are often the most privileged."
Graglia closed his opening speech by saying that in a culture in which programs such as affirmative action are used, "it is not surprising that an O.J. Simpson case should result or that black students preferentially admitted should cheer the outcome."
D'Souza said that "racism in the old sense is not the problem" today. "Merit is instead the barrier," he said, citing studies that show black students average lower scores on standardized tests than do white students.
Fish countered these arguments by differentiating between "neutral principles" and "moral principles." The former, he said, is typical of D'Souza's logic, which works by "abstracting away" to a level so high that it "erases a difference that was obvious." Such a method, Fish said, creates results that are not applicable to people in the real world. Working for moral principles, he added, means remembering the historical record and developing strategies that can be attached to "real time."
Other panelists included Jerome Culp, professor of law at Duke; Philip Bobbitt, professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Michael Greve of the Center for Individual Rights, the organization that represented Hopwood in the Texas case. Duke law professor Paul Carrington moderated the debate.
While most of the audience agreed that the debate was interesting, many said they thought it missed a few key issues-including the question concerning what should be done about affirmative action in the future.
"I think they skirted around a lot of the issues. At the heart of the topic is, where does it stop? When will it be phased out?" said Enoch Lawrence, an Austin business professional who was visiting the University.
Melissa Harris, a third-year graduate student in political science, said she thought the discussion had serious shortcomings.
"These people are all obviously friends, and they make money to debate themselves; their levity during the debate precluded serious scholarship," she said. "Certainly part of the problem is that there were no female voices on the panel."
In a reception held after the debate, several dozen audience members centered their attention on D'Souza, asking him to talk on cultural and political topics akin to affirmative action.
"D'Souza made some brilliant points; his metaphors are so colorful," said Bob Sharma, a second-year law student, who cited an example in which D'Souza likened affirmative action to a track race where non-whites are given handicaps rather than beginning at an even starting line. "While you may not agree with him, his metaphors certainly make sense when you're listening to them."
The event was organized by Andy Sarwal, a third-year law student, who attended the University of Texas as an undergraduate. After developing the idea several months ago, he recruited different players in the national debate using funding from the Young Americas Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, among others.
Sarwal and assistant organizer Ted Parsons, a second-year law student, said they were pleased with the way the debate turned out.
"We had enough people here that the room got too hot, and we had enough people get angry during the debate that we had a lot of other people debating the topic outside of the room," Parsons said.
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