'Bakke' Set a New Path to Diversity for Colleges

30 years after the ruling, academe still grapples with race in admissions

By PETER SCHMIDT

Thirty years ago, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. sent the nation's selective colleges down a path where few had ventured before.

In the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, he wrote...