Rudenstine has been a leader on this issue since he authored his most recent President's Report on diversity in higher education. Last year he also coordinated an effort by 62 schools to publish a fullpage ad in The New York Times attesting to diversity's importance in higher education.

Though the University filed a brief in the Bakke case-and though Harvard College's admissions process was heralded in the majority decision as the model to be followed-it will rely on the efforts of various higher education associations to present its view in this case. Twenty-five associations filed a brief two weeks ago that encouraged the court to issue a narrow ruling pertaining only to the specifics of the case.

The basic issue in the case is whether the Piscataway school board acted unconstitutionally in 1989 when it laid off Sharon Taxman, a white teacher at a local high school, instead of an equally qualified black teacher who was the only minority member of the school's business faculty.

Rudenstine's cibcern that the court might expand its ruling beyond the narrow scope of the specific case is perhaps founded. In the case Hopwood vs. the University of Texas last year, the U.S. Third District Court's decision transcended the question of the case-whether the quota system employed by the University of Texas Law School was Constitutional-to outlaw any kind of preferences in admissions whatsoever.

The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, leaving the lower court's ruling in place as the law of the land in the district. But if it had upheld the ruling, even Harvard's delicate system of subtle preferences would have become illegal.

Many fear that the same impulse that has led some to throw out the entire affirmative action system rather than fix its faults could lead to the demise of the decades-old promise of federal funds for higher education; members of the 1994 Republican revolution nearly demolished the entire system of support in a single swipe of the budget ax.

Rudenstine's timing for entering the national debate is not just fortuitous-it is necessary. If he and others do not protest the destruction of the status quo, the values he has advanced his entire life may vanish in a flurry of legislation.