Diversity Messaging After Affirmative Action

Many colleges and universities communicate publicly that they value racial diversity—a practice this Article will call diversity messaging. Yet growing hostility to race-consciousness by courts, legislators, and other public figures has made diversity messaging increasingly fraught.<br><br>This Article examines empirically whether law schools changed their diversity messaging following the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), and, if so, how. I surveyed three sources of diversity messaging from law schools: admissions materials, hiring announcements, and DEI websites. Analysis of these materials revealed that schools significantly reduced or eliminated their diversity messaging after SFFA. Seventy-three percent of law schools revised the diversity messaging in their application materials: explicit references to race decreased by 73% and explicit references to diversity decreased by 36%. Similarly, 44% of law schools revised the diversity messaging in their hiring announcements: 50% of those schools eliminated language stating that they actively seek or value diversity, and the number of schools requesting a diversity statement decreased by 33%. Finally, 54% of law schools revised their DEI websites in the five months following SFFA, with 48% of those schools deleting explicit references to race or diversity, and several schools completely deleting their DEI pages.<br><br>These sweeping changes reveal that schools are revising their diversity messaging in ways that are not explicitly required by SFFA. One possible explanation for this seeming overcompliance with SFFA is that schools wish to reduce the legal, political, and social risks associated with diversity messaging after SFFA. Alternatively, we might conclude that schools’ commitment to racial diversity was always ambivalent—and thus easily surrendered when the winds shifted.<br><br>Regardless of the underlying explanation, the Article argues that the decrease in diversity messaging need not impair racial justice efforts on campus. Indeed, untethering diversity messaging from substantive racial justice may encourage schools to emphasize substance over signal. The Article concludes that racial justice can thrive in a post-SFFA world and offers several concrete measures that schools can pursue.