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KOLUMN Magazine

Black Student Enrollment at Harvard Law Drops by More Than Half

After a Supreme Court decision ended race-based admissions, some law schools saw a decline in Black and Hispanic students entering this fall. Harvard appeared to have the steepest drop.
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Photo, Harvard Law School has educated some of the nation’s best-known Black lawyers, including former President Barack Obama and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Credit, Billy Hickey for The New York Times

The number of Black students entering Harvard Law School dropped sharply this fall after last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, according to enrollment data released on Monday.

 

Harvard Law enrolled 19 first-year Black students, or 3.4 percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s, according to the data from the American Bar Association. Last year, the law school’s first-year class had 43 Black students, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

 

While changes in data calculation might explain some year-to-year changes, the decline at Harvard was much sharper than at other elite law schools. It was notable not only for its severity but also because of the school’s past role in educating some of the nation’s best-known Black lawyers, including former President Barack Obama, the former first lady Michelle Obama, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.

The Supreme Court decision, and the fact that Harvard College was named in the case, played a role, according to David B. Wilkins, a Harvard law professor who has studied Black representation in the legal profession.

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