Cambridge, Mass.

Recent court rulings against affirmative action have left some college admissions and financial aid officers asking, "If we can't consider race as part of the admissions process, then how can we make sure Blacks, Latinos and other underrepresented ethnic groups are not shut out of higher education?"

In response, more than one hundred scholars, lawyers, researchers, advocates, admissions and financial aid officers and students met at Harvard University to explore this question and identify ways to maintain access to higher education in an anti-affirmative action climate.

The conference was the third in a series convened by Harvard University's new Civil Rights Project. The project was begun by Christopher Edley Jr., a Harvard law school professor who served as President Bill Clinton's advisor on affirmative action, and Gary Orfield, a professor of education and social policy at Harvard.

"Gary and I decided last spring that we wanted to start, essentially, a civil rights think tank rooted in academia, with a base at Harvard, but with strong collaborative relationships with researchers in institutions around the country," Edley says. The co-founder's ambition is for the multi-disciplinary think tank to fund research and publish academic papers on civil rights issues as they relate to education, with the ultimate goal of influencing public policy.

"We do not want to be propagandists in the way that the Heritage Foundation is," Edley says. "On the other hand, we want to focus world-class research efforts on the most pressing civil rights issues and take aggressive steps to disseminate or market the results so that they help shape public debate." (For a review of Edley's new book on affirmative action, please see pg. 25.)

The April 11 conference, titled "Non-Racial Standards and Minority Opportunity," reviewed the effect that judicial decisions such as Hopwood, Fordice and Proposition 209, have had on admissions practices in states such as Texas, Mississippi and California. It also featured research presentations from scholars who have examined the alternatives to current affirmative action admissions practices, and featured an open discussion on the implications these court decisions and research might have on public policy, admissions practices and advocacy.