Dear friends,
I am elated to share with you a new paper written by two CEO contributors, Cory Liu and Anthony Pericolo. Cory was an instructor in our Second Annual Civil Rights Fellowship where he taught a session on affirmative action in the immediate aftermath of the Students for Fair Admissions decisions. Anthony is CEO’s first Visiting Legal Fellow and was also a law student fellow in CEO’s inaugural 2022 Civil Rights Fellowship. Both gentlemen continue to graciously donate their time to CEO while working fulltime in private law practice.
The paper, which will be published in Volume 77 of the Southern Methodist University Law Review, is available on SSRN at this link: Individual Dignity as the Foundation of an Inclusive Society – Liu & Pericolo
From the abstract:
“This Article explores how Fair Admissions sheds light on the failure of identity politics to create a genuinely inclusive, egalitarian society.”
“This Article argues for an alternative theoretical framework for civil rights advocacy rooted in individual dignity. It argues that society should banish arbitrary racial categories from public life, enforce bans on discrimination against both overt and covert discrimination when justified by the evidence, foster talent-based institutions that are inclusive of all people, and promote honest discourse about race. Only a society that values and respects the dignity of the individual can be genuinely inclusive and egalitarian.”
As we approach the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision outlawing race discrimination in college admissions, this paper is a vital piece of the puzzle to determine what our country should look like going forward. As the paper suggests, America is the most racially and ethnically diverse society in the history of mankind and that diversity is only increasing. Liu & Pericolo compellingly explain that many post-1960s civil rights advocates have failed to fully embrace this historic diversity. Instead, Identitarians [the practitioners of Identity Politics] have created historic factionalism moving us further and further away from the Civil Rights Era goal of a “genuinely inclusive, egalitarian society.” The Liu & Pericolo article explains that it doesn’t have to be this way and shines a bright light on a new direction founded on the longstanding concept of individual dignity.
This paper is an outstanding contribution to the post-SFFA conversation and so, as supporters of colorblind equal opportunity, I hope you will read and share it.
Sincerely,
Devon
