OPINION: Loss of top centrist judge will hit higher ed hard

“Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement augurs fast and profound on-the-ground changes in a long list of policy areas that directly touch citizens’ lives. Among these, no doubt, is the use of affirmative action in higher education. Kennedy famously abandoned his long-standing skepticism about affirmative-action programs – for example in his 1989 concurrence in City of Richmond v Croson — to cast the deciding vote in 2016 in Fisher v. University of Texas upholding the use of race as a factor in the college-admissions process.”