You’ll hear people say sometimes that affirmative action is reverse discrimination,” Tom Powell said. “And because it’s reverse discrimination, it’s automatically wrong, because the constitution doesn’t allow discrimination by race.” “But the constitution does allow discrimination by race,” Powell continued.

Powell, a former professor in Guilford’s philosophy department, spoke at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 24 on the recent Supreme Court rulings that affected college admissions procedures in light of affirmative action.

In June 2003, the court ruled on two cases brought against the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law school admissions policies. The plaintiffs were two white women, Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter, who claimed that lesser-qualified minority students were accepted into the UMich programs while they were not.

Cnn.com describes these two cases as, “the most significant test(s) of affirmative action to reach the court in a generation.”

Powell, who attended law school after teaching for seven years at Guilford, was part of the legal teams that represented UMich during the proceedings. This experience, and the concept of affirmative action used in college admissions procedures, served as the focus for Powell’s talk.

The plight of Ms. Gratz and Ms. Grutter caught the attention of the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), “a nonprofit public-interest law firm dedicated to the defense of individual liberties against the increasingly aggressive and unchecked authority of federal and state governments,” that “aggressively litigate(s) and publicize(s) a handful of carefully selected cases that advance the right of individuals,” according to their website, www.cir-usa.org.

Powell likened the CIR’s stance and policy in the development of the Gratz and Grutter cases to that used by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP, which culminated in the historic Brown v. Board ruling in 1953.

Cheryl Thompson Brown and Linda Henderson Brown, daughters of the plaintiff for that case, spoke at Guilford on Nov. 17, 2004.

Bakke v. Regents, a 1978 Supreme Court case, gave the common understanding of affirmative action practices as, “Having a diverse student body is a compelling reason for discrimination,” according to Powell, paraphrasing Justice Lewis Powell.

This decision also stated that racial quotas, even for the cause of diversity, are unconstitutional, as quotas do not meet the Supreme Court accepted reasons for discrimination.

These legal reasons for discrimination, in the instances of affirmative action especially, are “a compelling governmental interest,” said Powell. “In technical terms, you’d better have a damn good reason.”

Additionally, that reason has to be, “narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling interest,” Powell said. “Even then, you can only discriminate when you absolutely have to.”

The official ruling of the 2003 cases were that, while the UMich law school admission policies were acceptable to the Court, the undergraduate procedure, which used a point system to determine the eligibility of candidates for admission, was not constitutional.

The undergraduate system awarded points to students for being from a rural area, for playing sports, and for being the children of alumni, among other things. Racial minorities received extra points.

The UMich undergraduate school had a new admissions policy in place within two months of the ruling.

“Private schools wouldn’t have to worry (about the ruling) – if they didn’t take federal money,” said Powell.

Private schools, like Guilford, that receive any federal money through grants, loans, and scholarships, must be constitutionally in compliance with federal laws, including those regarding affirmative action, in order to continue to receive those funds.

Powell’s lecture was part of what Jonathan Malino, chair of the philosophy department, described as a “satellite series of lectures” related to this year’s Bryan Speaker Series, on the theme of “Challenges Facing Democracy.” Malino introduced Powell to the audience of approximately 50 people in Founders Gallery that night.

“(The talk) was a lot like being in one of his classes,” said Vance Ricks, a Guilford alum and philosophy professor, who took classes taught by Powell. “It was engaging, and he also covered the fundamentals and the principles that were behind everything. You were being entertained, but you were also learning.