Bok said that a ruling in the Michigan cases will likely affect Harvard regardless of which side wins.
“They’re not merely deciding the Constitution, they’re also resolving the meaning of the Higher Education Act which applies to all institutions that receive federal aid,” he said.
Bok’s connections to the affirmative action debate, however, don’t end with his scholarship and advocacy work.
With the Court likely to split down the middle, one of his former Stanford classmates could end up casting the deciding vote.
“I went to college with Sandra Day O’Connor, but we didn’t talk too much about preferential admissions,” Bok said in February.
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—Jenifer L. Steinhardt can be reached at steinhar@fas.harvard.edu.