特朗普政府将鼓励大学招生忽略种族因素
华盛顿——特朗普政府官员表示，政府将鼓励全国学校管理者和大学校长采用无视种族的招生标准，放弃奥巴马政府要求大学将种族视为校园多元化的一个因素。
Last November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked the Justice Department to re-evaluate past policies that he believed pushed the department to act beyond what the law, the Constitution and the Supreme Court had required, Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman said. As part of that process, the Justice Department rescinded seven policy guidances from the Education Department’s civil rights division Tuesday.
司法部发言人德文·M·奥马利(Devin M. O'Malley)说，去年11月，司法部长杰夫·塞申斯(Jeff Sessions) 认为过去的一些政策促使司法部做出了超出法律、宪法和最高法院要求的行动，他要求司法部对这些政策进行重新评估。作为该评估过程的一部分，司法部于周二取消了教育部民权办公室颁发的七项政策指导。
“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and — in some instances — stays on the books for decades,” O’Malley said.
“行政部门不能通过制定超越法律的指导方案来规避国会或法院，在某些情况下，这些指导方案会被记录在案长达数十年之久，”奥马利说。
The Supreme Court has steadily narrowed the ways that schools can consider race when trying to diversify their student bodies. But it has not banned the practice.
最高法院已逐步减少了学校在试图令学生群体多样化时就种族因素所采取的措施。但它并没有禁止这种做法。
Now, affirmative action is at a crossroads. The Trump administration is moving against any use of race as a measurement of diversity in education. And the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy at the end of this month will leave the court without its swing vote on affirmative action and allow President Donald Trump to nominate a justice opposed to a policy that for decades has tried to integrate elite educational institutions.
现在，平权行动正处于十字路口。特朗普政府正在继续反对一切以种族衡量教育多样性的措施。安东尼·肯尼迪(Anthony Kennedy)大法官将于本月底退休，离开最高法庭，这令最高法院关于平权行动的投票失去了摇摆票，唐纳德·特朗普总统亦可提名一位新法官，反对一项几十年来试图整合精英教育机构的政策。
A highly anticipated case is pitting Harvard against Asian-American students who say one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions has systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races. That case is clearly aimed at the Supreme Court.
哈佛大学对亚裔学生案是一个备受瞩目的案例，学生们称，这个国家最负盛名的学府之一有计划有步骤地排除了一些亚裔申请者，以便为其他种族的学生保留名额。该案件显然希望上诉到最高法院。
“The whole issue of using race in education is being looked at with a new eye in light of the fact that it’s not just white students being discriminated against, but Asians and others as well,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. “As the demographics of the country change, it becomes more and more problematic.”
“不仅白人学生受到歧视，而且亚裔和其他群体也受到歧视，因此在教育中考虑种族这件事正在从整体上被重新审视，”保守组织平等机会中心(Center for Equal Opportunity)主席兼法律总顾问罗杰·克莱格(Roger Clegg)说。“随着国家人口结构的变化，问题越来越多。”
The Obama administration believed that students benefit from being surrounded by diverse classmates, so in 2011 the administration offered schools a potential road map to establishing affirmative action policies that could withstand legal scrutiny. The guidance was controversial at the time that it was issued for its far-reaching interpretation of the law. Justice officials said that pages of hypothetical scenarios offered in the guidance were particularly problematic as they clearly bent the law to specific policy preferences.
奥巴马政府认为，置身多样化的同学之中会令学生受益，因此在2011年，该政府为学校提供了一份经得住法律审查、建设平权行动政策的潜在方案。这份指导方案在发布时颇有争议，有人认为它在阐释法律方面走得太远。司法官员表示，指导方案中关于情景假设的几页特别成问题，因为它们显然是在根据具体的政策偏好歪曲法律。
In a pair of policy guidance documents, the Obama Education and Justice departments told elementary and secondary schools and college campuses to use “the compelling interests” established by the court to achieve diversity. They concluded that the Supreme Court “has made clear such steps can include taking account of the race of individual students in a narrowly tailored manner.”
在两份政策指导文件中，奥巴马时期的教育部和司法部要中小学以及大学基于最高法院确立的“令人信服的利益”来实现多样性。它们总结道，最高法院“明确表示，这些措施可以包括以严密关联的方式考虑学生个体的种族”。
The Trump administration’s decisions Tuesday brought government policy back to the George W. Bush administration guidances. The Trump administration did not formally reissue Bush-era guidance on race-based admissions, but, in recent days, officials did repost a Bush administration affirmative action policy document online.
特朗普政府周二的决定将让政府政策回归到乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)政府的指导方案。特朗普政府没有正式重新发布布什时代关于种族问题的入学指导方案，但是，最近几天，政府官员确实在网上重新发布了布什政府的平权行动政策文件。
That document states, “The Department of Education strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods for assigning students to elementary and secondary schools.”
该文件指出，“教育部强烈鼓励使用种族中立的方法将学生分配到中小学。”
For the past several years, that document had been replaced by a note declaring that the policy had been withdrawn. The Bush policy is now published in full, with no note attached. It reaffirmed its view in 2016 after a Supreme Court ruling that said that schools could consider race as one factor among many.
过去几年里，这个文件为一个备注所取代，其中写着这一政策已经被撤回了。布什政府的政策如今已经全文公布，不带有任何备注。在最高法院在一份裁决中表示学校应当将种族作为多种因素一道纳入考量后，2016年，它重申了自己的观点。
In that case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a white woman claimed she was denied admission because of her race, in part because the university had a program that admitted significant numbers of minorities who ranked in the top 10 percent of their class.
在那个案件，即费舍诉德州大学奥斯汀分校案(Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin)中，一名白人女子称自己因为种族而没能被录取，而部分原因是因为这所大学有一个项目，该项目录取了占据其班级排名前10%的大批少数族裔学生。
“It remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity,” Kennedy wrote for the 4-3 majority.
“要在多元的追求和宪法对平等待遇和尊严的承诺之间达成一致，仍然是我国教育体系面临的一个长期挑战，”肯尼迪大法官就这个以4比3票通过的裁决写道。
The Trump administration’s plan would scrap the existing policies and encourage schools not to consider race at all. The new policy would not have the force of law, but it amounts to the official view of the federal government. School officials who keep their admissions policies intact would do so knowing that they could face a Justice Department investigation or lawsuit, or lose federal funding from the Education Department.
特朗普政府的计划将抛弃现有的政策，鼓励学校完全不考虑种族。新的政策将不具备法律效力，但相当于联邦政府的官方观点。保持录取政策不变的学校官员知道自己会面临司法部调查或起诉，或者失去来自教育部的联邦资助。
A senior Justice Department official pushed back against the idea that these decisions are about rolling back protections for minorities. He said they are hewing the department closer to the letter of the law.
对于这些决定事关收回对少数族裔保护的观点，司法部一名高级官员予以了反驳。他表示他们正在让该部进一步依从法律条文。
He noted that rolling back guidance is not the same thing as a change of law, so that the decision to rescind technically would not have a legal effect on how the government defends or challenges affirmative-action related issues.
他指出，收回指导方案与更改法律不同，所以从技术上说，取消指导的决定不会对政府如何辩护或质疑与平权行动相关的问题产生法律影响。
The move comes at a moment when conservatives see an opportunity to dismantle affirmative action.
这一举措公布之时，正值保守派看到了一个解除平权行动的机会。
Sessions has said his prosecutors will investigate and sue universities over discriminatory admissions policies. And the conservative-backed lawsuit against Harvard is being pushed by the same group, the Project on Fair Representation, that pressed Fisher.
塞申斯已经表示过，他的检察官们将调查并且起诉那些存在歧视性录取政策的大学。此外，由保守派支持、针对哈佛大学的起诉正在由向费舍施压，要求其行动的同一群人推动，即公平代表运动(Project on Fair Representation)。
Anurima Bhargava, who headed civil rights enforcement in schools for the Justice Department under President Barack Obama and co-authored the Obama-era guidance, said that the policy withdrawal was timed for brief filings in the Harvard litigation, due at the end of the month.
贝拉克·奥巴马总统任内在司法部负责学校落实民事权、共同起草奥巴马时代指导方案的阿奴利马·巴尔加瓦(Anurima Bhargava)表示，撤回该政策是为了赶上哈佛诉讼案于本月底递交摘要的时机。
“This is a wholly political attack,” Bhargava said. “And our schools are the place where our communities come together, so our schools have to continue to promote diversity and address segregation, as the U.S. Constitution demands.”
“这完全是政治攻击，”巴尔加瓦表示。“而且我们的学校是社区集合起来的地方，所以我们的学校必须要继续按照美国宪法要求的那样，促进多元化，解决隔离问题。”
“It’s part of a broader conservative effort to undermine affirmative action,” said Samuel Bagenstos, a University of Michigan law professor and former Justice Department civil rights lawyer. “It’s something Republican administrations have been doing since Reagan.”
“这是保守派破坏平权行动更大范围努力的一部分，”密歇根大学(University of Michigan)法学教授、前司法部民权律师塞缪尔·巴格斯托斯(Samuel Bagenstos)说。“这是共和党政府自里根以来一直在做的事。”
On Friday, the Education Department began laying the groundwork for the guidance decision. It restored on its civil rights website the Bush-era guidance, which had been shuttered by the Obama administration, signaling a shift of the Education Department’s stance on affirmative action, according to a person with knowledge of the decision.
周五，教育部开始为指导方案的决定奠定基础。它在民权网站上恢复了布什时代的指导方案，而这一方案曾被奥巴马政府终结。据一名熟悉该决定的人士表示，这一举动表明教育部在平权行动上的立场发生了改变。
A spokeswoman for the Education Department did not respond to repeated inquiries for comment.
教育部一位发言人没有回复置评的请求。
