It’s not quite as dramatic as George Wallace standing in a schoolhouse door sixty years and 19 days ago, trying to block the enrollment of the first two blacks at the University of Alabama, but the incoming (tomorrow) president of Harvard, Claudine Gay is almost as defiant in a video released in reaction to a federal demand that her institution stop discriminating on the basis of race, albeit in a subtler, wordier manner, couched in terms of regret, resolve and compassion. Harvard will find a way around the ruling, rest assured.

YouTube screengrab

Harvard’s official newspaper, the Harvard Gazette was less subtle in its headline, “Harvard united in resolve in face of Supreme Court’s admissions ruling.”

This defiant language means that Asian students will continue to be rejected with far greater qualifications than those required for black and Hispanic students to be admitted, so that Harvard can claim to be “diverse” with a critical mass of blacks, while the number of Asians admitted to its undergraduate programs can continue to be curtailed below what a race-blind, meritocratic system based heavily on impartial academic achievement metrics would yield.

But don’t worry. Harvard and most other highly competitive schools have eliminated the SAT and/or ACT achievement tests, so there won’t be any metrics that can demonstrate discrimination. There will no doubt be lawsuits ahead, but they will have a hard time demonstrating discrimination absent a metric comparing the academic skills of all students applying.

President-designate Gay’s one minute-forty-two-second video responding to the decision is worth watching for two particular moments:

One is where she lays out the case that racial discrimination yields academic excellence:

[A] thriving, diverse intellectual community is essential to academic excellence and critical to shaping the next generation of leaders.

The other is where she offers comfort to the affirmative action students at Harvard who must be facing the psychological stress of knowing they were admitted under easier standards than those applied to others.

To our current students, you make excellence possible, and you belong at Harvard. Never doubt that.

Listen carefully as she conclude this thought with an audible sigh.

As Harvard’s first black president, Dr. Gay’s sigh may have extra meaning. I have to wonder if she was chosen to “break the glass ceiling” in the expectation that the Supreme Court would hand down the very ruling she faces now.