Essay on The Ethics of Affirmative Action in Higher Education Admissions - 2,173 words

The Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Affirmative Action

The debate surrounding the ethics of affirmative action in higher education admissions is one of the most enduring and polarized conflicts in American social and legal philosophy. At its core, the issue pits two fundamental American values against one another: the principle of individual merit and the pursuit of collective social justice. Affirmative action, in the context of university admissions, refers to policies and practices that consider an applicant's race or ethnicity as one factor among many in the evaluative process. The goal is typically to increase the representation of underrepresented groups, thereby fostering a more diverse and inclusive campus environment.

To understand the ethical landscape, one must first look to the historical context that necessitated these policies. The term "affirmative action" was first used in a legal sense by President John F. Kennedy in Executive Order 10925, which required government contractors to take proactive steps to ensure that applicants were employed without regard to their race. However, it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who provided the most famous moral justification for the practice. In his 1965 commencement address at Howard University, Johnson argued that "you do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair."

This metaphor of the "shackled runner" forms the basis of the compensatory justice argument. From this perspective, the ethics of affirmative action in higher education admissions are rooted in the need to rectify centuries of systemic exclusion and state-sanctioned discrimination. For much of the 20th century, elite universities were almost exclusively the domain of white men. Proponents argue that because the playing field was never level, treating all applicants with strict colorblindness merely cements the advantages of the historically privileged. Thus, affirmative action serves as a corrective mechanism, an ethical intervention designed to bridge the gap between formal equality (the law) and substantive equality (actual opportunity).

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