Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/164

Rh like.” Harvard Report 11. Black and Latino applicants account for only 20% of domestic applicants to Harvard each year. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 20–1199, p. 112. “Even those students of color who beat the odds and earn an offer of admission” continue to experience isolation and alienation on campus. Brief for 25 Harvard Student and Alumni Organizations as Amici Curiae 30–31; 2 App. 823, 961. For years, the university has reported that inequities on campus remain. See, e.g., 4 App. 1564–1601. For example, Harvard has reported that “far too many black students at Harvard experience feelings of isolation and marginalization,” 3 id., at 1308, and that “student survey data show[ed] that only half of Harvard undergraduates believe that the housing system fosters exchanges between students of different backgrounds,” id., at 1309.

These may be uncomfortable truths to some, but they are truths nonetheless. “Institutions can and do change,” however, as societal and legal changes force them “to live up to [their] highest ideals.” Harvard Report 56. It is against this historical backdrop that Harvard and UNC have reckoned with their past and its lingering effects. Acknowledging the reality that race has always mattered and continues to matter, these universities have established institutional goals of diversity and inclusion. Consistent with equal protection principles and this Court’s settled law, their policies use race in a limited way with the goal of recruiting, admitting, and enrolling underrepresented racial minorities to pursue the well-documented benefits of racial integration in education.

The Court today stands in the way of respondents’ commendable undertaking and entrenches racial inequality in higher education. The majority opinion does so by turning