Lincoln Caplan, senior writer for US News & World Report and one of America's leading observers of legal and public affairs, defended affirmative action last night in a speech titled "A Pragmatist's Case for Affirmative Action."
Caplan spoke before more than 50 people in the Rockefeller Center.
"Affirmative action was born of a national sense of duty," Caplan said. He went on to credit affirmative action programs with "yielding a banquet of talent, including men like General Colin Powell, that would have gone unreached if not for those programs."
Caplan has been the director of a project on affirmative action for the Twentieth Century Fund, a foundation that supports research about social policy.
He described affirmative action as a "peculiarly American idea" proposed by Lyndon Johnson who said, "It is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity."
Caplan said he thinks "the great glory of affirmative action is its Republican idealism. It's the belief that it is in our interests to look beyond the interests of our own group."
Caplan said he views affirmative action, "not as an ends in itself, but rather, a series of means to a wide variety of ends."
Caplan also discussed criticisms of affirmative action.
"Critics say that affirmative action undermines the American commitment to excellence and reminds us how we are different, not how we are the same," he said.
He said the debate over the legality of affirmative action centers around interpretation of the Constitution.
"No area of American life has perplexed the Supreme Court as much as affirmative action," Caplan said.
Caplan believes affirmative action should play a larger role in the upcoming Presidential elections than it has to this point.
"It's a great irony in this election that neither affirmative action nor the Supreme Court have become serious issues, yet they come together in a way which makes them hugely important in this choice," he said.
According to Caplan, the next president may have the opportunity to choose as many as three new Supreme Court Justices. This could lead to a shift in the Supreme Court's opinion on affirmative action which, Caplan said, now appears to stand five to four in favor of eliminating affirmative action programs.
Caplan presented his speech in conjunction with the Ivy League Affirmative Action Conference. The three- day conference, which will conclude tomorrow, has been attended by 13 representatives from seven schools.
"It's more of a professional meeting," said Director of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Mary Childers. "The conference is a chance for people of similar fields to get together and share ideas. We were especially lucky this year to have it intercept with Caplan's visit."
