Ed Blum Celebrates Victory Over Affirmative Action

Ed Blum Celebrates Victory Over Affirmative Action

It doesn’t sound like Blum is finished slaying giants yet. It’s an exciting time for people who want reform.

Inside Higher Ed reports:

Ed Blum Takes a Victory Lap

Edward Blum isn’t quite a household name. But at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., he’s a minor celebrity.

The conservative think tank has played host to an array of high-profile politicos, pundits, journalists and businesspeople over the years: Bill Gates, Mike Pence, Jordan Peterson, the Dalai Lama. Blum, who took affirmative action to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 and won, spoke at the institute earlier this month about his decades of legal activism.

It was something of a homecoming for the president of Students for Fair Admissions, who lives in Florida but has been a visiting fellow at AEI since 2005. It was also, in many ways, a victory lap.

Since the court ruled in his favor in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Blum’s vision of what he calls a “colorblind covenant in public policy” has been ascendant, and in the new Trump administration, Blum’s zealous opposition to race-conscious programs has become a domineering force driving education policy.

Over the weekend, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a letter outlining an expansive interpretation of the SFFA ruling and its plans to enforce a ban on all race-conscious programming in higher ed; colleges that don’t comply in 14 days could lose their federal funding. During her confirmation hearing Thursday, Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon said ending “race-based programming” would be a priority if she were confirmation.

Blum, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed before the OCR letter was published, believes that affirmative action has long been unpopular—winning the public relations battle, he said, was “the easiest part of my job.” Still, he said the political, legal and cultural backlash against affirmative action and DEI over the past few years was affirming. In Trump’s Washington, Blum, who fought the courts unsuccessfully for decades, feels like an insider at last.

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