Social lunch -- Jordan Starck (Princeton University).

There are numerous reasons why institutions of higher education may choose to embrace diversity. A common rationale sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court is that diversity provides compelling educational benefits and is thus instrumentally useful. In a series of studies, we find that such instrumental rationales are the predominant rationale for diversity efforts in American higher education, are preferred by White Americans and not by Black Americans, that they are expected to advantage White Americans, and that they correspond to greater racial disparities in academic achievement. We find evidence that these racial disparities may be driven by how instrumental rationales influence White individuals’ diversity-relevant attitudes and behaviors. Overall, these findings suggest that the rationales behind universities’ embrace of diversity have non-legal consequences that should be considered in institutional decision-making.