US students on why affirmative action is crucial: ‘They need our voices’

Harvard and UNC attendees address how applicants' backgrounds shape their lives as supreme court hears case

When Andrew Brennen thinks about the US supreme court deliberations over race-conscious admissions, he reflects on his parents, both attorneys, and his brother. In 2009, his father, David, became the first Black dean of the University of Kentucky's law school since the state desegregated its colleges and universities.

Had they not had access to higher education that they received, who knows what they would've been doing," Brennen, who graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019, says. I'm thinking a lot about how different my life, my brother's life, would be if affirmative action hadn't been in place."