The University of North Carolina is a state-run institution, and Harvard University receives millions every year in federal subsidies. Thus, it’s a pretty clear-cut case that these colleges are not allowed to practice race-based admissions, considering the text of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reads:

When Harvard rejects a Korean-American applicant who would have gotten in had she been an African-American student, Harvard is excluding that woman from participation on the grounds of race.

To argue otherwise, Harvard, UNC, and their allies need to seek out penumbras and emanations of this law. I haven’t found any of these arguments convincing enough to throw aside the plain text of the law and the discriminatory nature of the admissions practices.

Nevertheless, I think conservatives need to ask themselves some more abstract questions: Is a perfectly meritocratic admissions policy practical or desirable? Is it always morally wrong to discriminate based on race, color, or national origin?

First of all, a conservative should be skeptical of simple, one-size-fits-all answers to questions such as “How should one compose a college?” Maybe for a state school such as UNC, the best, fairest method is to create an objective index of GPAs, SATs, and sports and just admit by highest index score. But a smaller college might be looking for other traits.

When the New York Times recently went after yeshivas in New York City, the reporters never once considered that some parents may see the purpose of an education differently than do the parents of future New York Times reporters. The idea that a school could succeed by helping form boys and girls into God-fearing men and women is a foreign idea in our meritocratic elite higher circles.

We make the same error when we see college admission as a merit award. But admission to college is not a prize, it’s an invitation. Admitting an applicant is not saying “You’re the best! You won at being ages 14 to 18!” Admitting an applicant is, in effect, saying, “We believe you will really contribute to our community of learning.”

While I believe that last line, I also understand that it sounds exactly like an excuse for rank discrimination. If a co-op board used that language as part of a race-conscious framework for approving potential residents, it would be presumed by the news media and the DOJ to be a cover story for racism.

Also, my view of college admission — that it is an invitation to a community of learning, not a merit prize — won’t console a working-class daughter of a Korean immigrant who gets rejected from Harvard, which would have been her ticket to career success.

Amid all of these complexities, though, I think a conservative should grant private educational institutions — even those that receive federal subsidies — the right to define their own purpose. And according to the inevitably varied purposes of various colleges, we will have varied admissions criteria. Some of those might include race.

You may ask how admitting based on race could ever be valid. I would answer that diversity has its own value in many settings. I went to a small liberal arts college where every class was a discussion class. We all tried to stick very closely to the text before us, but humans are not robots. We all bring our own perspectives and experiences to the table. (The import of this experience is why I defended the maligned phrase “as a father of daughters.”)

At a small liberal arts college where we discuss philosophy and literature, it’s good to have diversity along many axes, including religion and class, but also including race and national origin.

Race-conscious admission isn’t necessarily bad. It may clearly be illegal, but we all know that what Congress bans and what’s evil are not the same thing.