Pace Now

President Krislov pens a column about the Supreme Court’s hearings on race in the college admission process as justices consider abolishing the practice...

Writing for the majority in the 2003 Supreme Court decision Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor looked back at precedent: “It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education.”

Not too long after the 2006 ballot initiative, Marvin Krislov left Michigan to become the president of Oberlin College, in Ohio, and later took the same role at Pace University, in New York City—a school that is less than fifty per cent white and admits more than eighty per cent of its applicants. Working at a school that’s not hyper-focused on élite admissions has not changed his belief in the importance of diversity. But his latest gig has changed his perspective. “I wouldn’t say that I’m running away from the notion that affirmative action can be an important tool for college admissions,” he said. These days, though, he spends more time thinking about everything that happens before kids apply to college, and how debates about diversity in higher education have obscured the many barriers that students face in getting to college in the first place. “The majority of Americans are not going to go to the University of Michigan or Harvard,” Krislov said. “And that’s just fine.”

President Marvin Krislov provides legal insights and expertise for The Hechinger Report’s in-depth series exploring the origins of affirmative action and the arguments before the Supreme Court that are challenging this practice today.

President Krislov talks being back on campus, more forward momentum for the University's strategic plan, ongoing improvements to our NYC Campus, plans for Emotional Wellbeing Month, and so much more.

As I talk to students around our campuses—on new student move-in days, as part of undergraduate convocations, even in the law school seminar I’m teaching this semester—what I hear consistently is that students are ready to move on.

"Welcome to the Fall 2022 semester, and welcome to what is shaping up to be our first post-pandemic academic year at Pace University. I’m proud of how this community came together over the past few years," writes President Krislov.

They used to say it’s not what you know but who you know that helps you to get ahead. It’s an axiom from a different era—a less egalitarian, less meritocratic, clubbier time. But a major new study on economic mobility is once again proving, albeit in a very different way, that who you know can make a real difference in outcomes.

The lingering pandemic transformed the American labor market. Employers from fast-food restaurants to airlines to rec departments with swimming pools are confronting sometimes-crippling staffing shortages. The most recent employment numbers showed 11.3 million job openings nationwide, or nearly two open jobs for every unemployed worker.

We are facing a mental health crisis on campuses across the country. And at a time when it often can feel like the federal government is too divided to address any of the many other problems facing us, Congress is actually taking steps to address this crisis.

Pace University’s mission is captured in the Latin word “Opportunitas,” which the school defines as “Providing all students, regardless of economic background, access to the transformative power of education.” As evidence that it lives up to its word, Pace has been ranked as the best private, four-year college or university in the nation for upward economic mobility.