Princeton professor: Affirmative action ruling will lead to ‘segregated’ higher ed

A leading academic is warning that the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions could lead to “segregated” classrooms at universities across the country.

“We will return to elite institutions most specifically being the space for particular populations, for predominantly white and Asian students,” said Eddie Glaude Jr., a professor at Princeton University who is a regular contributor to MSNBC, during the network’s breaking news coverage of the SCOTUS ruling.

“We will begin to see a kind of segregated higher education landscape,” Glaude Jr. said. “The irony of course … this was just one remedy to the legacy of discrimination in admissions in American higher education. Only one remedy, and so here they’ve taken it away.”

More on the Supreme Court’s ruling from The Hill

• Supreme Court upends affirmative action in college admissions

• READ: Supreme Court’s affirmative action majority opinion

• Sotomayor’s biting dissent: Ruling rolls back ‘decades of precedent and momentous progress’

• Obama says affirmative action ‘allowed generations of students’ to ‘prove we belonged’

• Trump praises SCOTUS ruling on affirmative action: ‘This is a great day for America’

In a decision that broke along ideological lines, the court’s six conservative justices ruled against the admission schemes set up by Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, determining they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

The decision sparked an instant backlash from Democrats and cheers from Republicans.

In a statement issued shortly after the ruling came down, former President Barack Obama wrote his “heart breaks for any young person out there who’s wondering what their future holds — and what kinds of chances will be open to them.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.