In June of 2003 the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the much-discussed affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger. The majority opinion, written by swing vote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, validated the consideration of race in university admissions in the name of the educational value of diversity. Bolstered by petitions from Fortune 500 companies hungry for diverse employees to appeal to an increasingly diverse consumer base and manage an even more diverse global labor force, Grutter offered a picture of the harmonious university family where students learn from each other’s differences. Importantly, because the Grutter university family is to be comfortable, bearing nothing of the scars of past oppression, it echoes today’s university marketing in which a safe, secure, and only incidentally diverse community is promised to aspiring applicants.1 The current moment is one that finds universities busily selling themselves on the return of a comfortable, but not disturbingly diverse, in loco parentis and finds race to be part of that sale.2
