A Reagan appointee, Justice Kennedy is no liberal, as he has shown on issues from affirmative action to corporate campaign spending. But he has repeatedly sided with gay litigants before the court.
Adam Cohen
I was critical of race-based affirmative action early on in my career and I've changed my mind. And I've publicly acknowledged that I was wrong.
Alan Dershowitz
In Obama's case, we've enabled affirmative action to find a home in the nation's highest office. There you have it. I said it and I stand by it. America fell for the gimmick candidate, disregarding every fact and warning sign in the rush to have 'the first African-American president.'
Allen West
Jews have been harmed by the threats to freedom of opinion and debate, the punishments for candor, and the decline in rigorous standards in the academy that have accompanied progressive hegemony, which insists upon the sacrosanct status of affirmative action and other policies favored by the left.
Amy Wax
The sixth man, the position, I don't have a problem with, but the award - it's not that it's not important, but being singled out, it's like affirmative action or something like that to me. So, it's like, whatever.
Andre Iguodala
Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.
Andrew Young
Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.
I am an affirmative action hire.
Anna Quindlen
I regard affirmative action as pernicious - a system that had wonderful ideals when it started but was almost immediately abused for the benefit of white middle-class women.
Camille Paglia
Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms - as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance.
Cass Sunstein
I don't know what this definition of affirmative action is for some.
Chaka Fattah
Advocating for affirmative action through the prism of diversity may be more politically palatable, but it will inevitably yield insufficient results.
Clint Smith
Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.
To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society.
To abandon affirmative action is to say there is nothing more to be done about discrimination.
Coretta Scott King
I believe that Harvard can have, and must have, a strong affirmative action program that reflects our commitment to equal opportunity while fully respecting the academic standards of the University.
Derek Bok
If we are prepared to invest the necessary time and effort, affirmative action can contribute to Harvard's quality and not detract from it.
I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.
Dick Gephardt
I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.
It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills.
Douglas Brinkley
Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.
In the end, arguing about affirmative action in selective colleges is like arguing about the size of a spigot while ignoring the pool and the pipeline that feed it. Slots at Duke and Princeton and Cal are finite.
Affirmative action has been generally cast in terms of race. I think women themselves are not as cognizant of the role affirmative action has played in opening the doors for women.
When I was a young filmmaker starting out, I was really snobby about all the affirmative action for women filmmakers because I felt it should be about your talent, and I made a film that won awards, and people wanted me.
Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.
I looked up affirmative action once in Wikipedia, and it said, 'A measure by which white men are discriminated against,' and I got so mad.
There's been the same kind of demonizing of the word 'feminism' as words like 'liberal,' 'affirmative action,' and so on.
When population shifts - brought about by fair housing laws, affirmative action and landmark school desegregation rulings - political power is challenged as well.
The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.
What is so remarkable about the success of affirmative action is that it has been accomplished despite the Justice Department and the policies of the federal government.
Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.
Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.
I'm not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one's skin color or one's gender, I think it should be done based on one's need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.
Affirmative action is a little like the professional football draft. The NFL awards its No. 1 draft choices to the lowest-ranked team in the league. It doesn't do this out of compassion or guilt. It's done for mutual survival. They understand that a league can only be as strong as its weakest team.
My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.
Affirmative action based on quotas is wrong - wrong because it is antithetical to the genius of the American idea: individual liberty.
And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.
Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds.
I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.
For a long time, the Court has moved toward outlawing all forms of racial preference, including affirmative action, and Obama seems accepting, even supportive, of the change.
Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.
Affirmative action was always racial justice on the cheap.
Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.
Old white guys can be a funny bunch, can't they? The same anti-same-sex marriage, anti-affirmative action cadre can flower into the biggest supporters of 'equality' the minute they get a whiff of minority empowerment.
Republicans can be a funny bunch. They're against affirmative action, but they always seem to be able to find people of color to fill a slot just when they're most needed.
Here's the point - you're looking at affirmative action, and you're looking at marijuana. You legalize marijuana, no need for quotas, because really, who's gonna wanna work?
Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing.
I'm always excited when I make it on anyone's list - even if it's for affirmative action. My attitude is, 'Am I the token woman on this list? Because I'll take it.'
I think it's worth putting energy into affirmative action in terms of having diversity in positions of power because the door was shut for so long.
Affirmative action is not something that the World Bank believes in or promotes.
