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The University of Michigan affirmative action cases (Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003b; Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003a) marked a small triumph for educational researchers and scholars of campus racial diversity. The U.S. Supreme Court decisions affirm the legal interpretation of the compelling state interest in the use of a race-based policy: achieving the educational benefits that result from a racially and ethnically diverse student body. A record 107 amicus briefs were filed with the Court (Lynch, 2004), many of them referencing a large body of research examining the effects of racial diversity on educational outcomes in college. The affirmation of the compelling interest rationale validated the general finding of this work-racial diversity provides educational benefits to students-as well as the significance of educational researchers in the deliberation of public policy.
The cases also ushered in what we view as the next challenge for higher education and, for educational researchers, another opportunity to be significant participants in higher education policymaking. The narrow majority (5-4) supporting the diversity rationale in the Court, along with Justice O'Connor's 25-year timetable for affirmative action, has leftopen the possibility of future litigation. Peter Kirsanow (2005), a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, writes that future plaintiffs will likely challenge an institution's good-faith efforts in actually producing the educational benefits derived from diversity. As researchers, we view this open-ended legal context as a call for continued work in this area, work whose aim is to more clearly identify the processes through which racial diversity does and does not contribute to educational outcomes, and more importantly, to identify how institutions do and do not facilitate these processes. In short, this call asks, "Do we know enough about how diversity works to practice the compelling interest approved by the Court?"
Toward that end, we briefly highlight the empirical record and prevailing approaches to studying the impact of diversity and propose a new conceptual paradigm for future work. Though there are a considerable number of empirical studies in this area, we find a limited range of scholarly approaches and a critical review suggests the possibility for several improvements. Ultimately, we propose a relational approach to the study of diversity in higher education that addresses ongoing concerns and promises to provide scholars and higher education practitioners...