Asian Americans & Affirmative Action

In 2023, the Supreme Court weighed in on affirmative action. In its rulings in the cases Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC, the Court effectively eliminated the use of affirmative action in college admissions, declaring that colleges can no longer consider race in admissions. Asian Americans were central in these cases; plaintiffs argued that affirmative action discriminated against Asian Americans. This panel will discuss the arguments for and against affirmative action, the repercussions of the Supreme Court ruling, the place of Asian Americans in these debates, andwhat kind of admissions processes we might anticipate in the future, as schools work through the Court’s decision.

Oiyan Poon is Co-Director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative, College Park, MD. Her forthcoming book (2024) is titled, Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations about Race, Affirmative Action, and Family (Beacon).

Natasha Warikoo is Lenore Stern Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Tufts University. In 2022, she published Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools (Chicago) and in 2023, Is AffirmativeAction Fair?: The Myth of Equity in College Admissions (Polity).

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