New Trend Of Affirmative Action In The Field Of American Higher Education

Affirmative action started in the 1960’s in America. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued executive order of 11246, marking the formal introduction of affirmative action. American affirmative action relates to employment, education, and promotion, government loans and government projects etc.. Concretely to the field of American higher education, it is refers to American public university in the acceptance of freshmen and distribution of scholarship, under the same conditions or similar circumstances, giving priority to African, Hispanic and Native Americans of Indian and other minorities students. In this paper, the author tries to analyze the four classic cases about affirmative action in American higher education, especially in 2013, Fisher v. University of Texas At Austin and the Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action in 2014, in the legal perspective to comprehensively analyze the new trend of the America affirmative action in the field of higher education:from supported to the voters have the right to prohibit. Behind this new trend also contains the change of legal value:from the emphasis on the protection of ethnic minorities rights to focus on the protection of individual’s equal rights of all citizen.In the first part, comprehensively represent the origin of American affirmative action in twentieth Century 60’s. The origin, connotation and theory and legal basis of American affirmative action are included. The theoretical basis is based on Rawls’s theory of justice; the legal basis is the Civil Rights Act of 1964:the provision is the prohibition of racial discrimination and American Constitution:the First Amendment on academic freedom and the Fourteenth Amendment about the principle of Equal Protection.The second part is the most important. Based on the study, translation and analysis of the affirmative action cases in the field of higher education, summarizes the new trend of affirmative action in the field of higher education: from supported to the voters have the right to prohibit. The main point is the cases of University of California Regents v. Bakke in 1978, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger in 2003, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin in 2013 and Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. The main contents include cases introduction, the Federal Supreme Court decision and testimony and the cases analysis. Four cases around affirmative action violates the Federal Constitution of Fourteenth Amendment of the principle of Equal Protection to analyze the new trend of affirmative action. Especially in the Federal Supreme Court decision in the case of Schuette, the new trend is voters have the right to prohibit affirmative action, and the same time affirmative action value orientation in the field of higher education has changed which is from the protection of ethnic minorities’equal rights to all citizens individual equal rights.The third part describes the evaluation of affirmative action in higher education which is based on the second part. Supporters’views are:the equal educational right of ethnic minorities is realized; making up inequality which is caused by the historical discrimination, achieving the compensation of justice; promoting the development of American campus culture, and prosperity of American multiculturalism. The opponent’s main points about affirmative action are:constituting reverse discrimination, on the contrary to American core values and compelling Negro feel shamed.The last part of the article is on the basis of the foregoing, through resume American affirmative action’s new trend that it has changed from protecting minorities equal rights to individual equal rights. Therefore, the author ponder over the educational policy of awarding points to high school students in China higher education field.