The 1997 SPSSI presidential address: affirmative action: a compelling state interest - Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues President Dalmas Taylor - Transcript

It's difficult to know where this political process has taken us, but I would like to suggest that we steer a path back to a proper course of seeking "affirmative opportunity."

The Harvard plan introduced in DeFunis by Archibald Cox and reaffirmed in Bakke provides an appropriate model of affirmative action or affirmative opportunity that can pass constitutional muster. One has to wonder why it has not been used by the many educational institutions who have had their admissions procedures challenged. Criticism of affirmative action will continue, not because it is unfair, but because a more heterogenous professional world will inevitably lead to a loss of White privilege. This is our challenge.

Thank you.

References

DeFunis v. Odegaard, 415 U.S. 312, 320, 94 S.Ct. 1704, 1707 (1974).

DeRonde v. Regents of the University of California, 28 Cal. 3d 875, 172 Cal. Rptr. 677, cert. denied, 454 U.S. 832, 102 S.Ct. 130 (1981).

Hopwood v. Texas, 78 E.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996).

McDonald v. Hogness, 598 P.2d 707 (Wash. 1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 962, 100 S.Ct. 1650 (1980).

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 98 S.Ct. 2733 (1978).

Tushnet, M. (1996). Foreword. In J. Stepanicic & R. Delgado, No mercy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

United States v. Fordice, 505 U.S. 17, 112 S.Ct. 2727 (1992).

DALMAS TAYLOR was President of SPSSI (1996-97) and was long affiliated with the governance of the organization prior to that. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and is best known for his scholarly contributions to social psychology in the areas of group behavior and the roots of racism, and for his direction of the Minority Fellowship Program of the American Psychological Association. After leaving Maryland, he was a Dean at Wayne State University, Provost at the University of Vermont and the University of Texas, and most recently Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. We were extremely saddened by his death on January 26, 1998, and are grateful for the opportunity to publish his last public address.

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