In November 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, I took off my mask and sat down nervously in the witness stand at the federal district courthouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
I was there to testify as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a conservative group challenging racial preferences at the University of North Carolina. (SFFA and I were also involved in a parallel suit against Harvard University.) I would be testifying that racial student body diversity is very important to achieve on college campuses, but that, according to my research, UNC-Chapel Hill could create an integrated campus without using race — if it jettisoned its preferences for privileged children of alumni and faculty and gave a meaningful admissions boost to economically disadvantaged students of all races.
This was a very unusual position for me to be in. Over the years, I’d allied myself closely with civil rights groups and leading Black officials — from civil rights activist and attorney Maya Wiley to politicians like Sen. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and President Barack Obama’s Education Secretary John B. King — on issues of schooling, housing and employment. But on the issue of whether preferences at elite colleges should be based on race or class, I was on the opposite side from many of my friends — and I had joined with an unlikely group: the deeply conservative attorneys of the law firm Consovoy McCarthy. A few had clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, and one was representing Trump to keep his tax returns private. Students for Fair Admissions was the brainchild of conservative activist Edward Blum, who had challenged a key section of the Voting Rights Act — litigation with which I strongly disagreed. Many of my liberal friends were mystified, even appalled, that I decided to help them.
