“The Affirmative Action Wars": New Paths to Inclusion & Racial Equity  

February 19, 2026 | 12:15-1:45 pm | Knight Law Center | Gleaves Auditorium, Rm 110

Register for the 2026 Derrick Bell Lecture

Attend in person or livestream. Oregon CLE Pending. 

Speaker: Justin Driver, Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School

Driver teaches and writes in the field of constitutional law and is the author of “The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education.” An elected member of the American Law Institute and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, President Biden appointed Driver to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. 

A recipient of the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize, Driver has a distinguished publication record in the nation’s leading law reviews. He has also written extensively for general audiences, including pieces in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Before entering legal academia, Driver served as a law clerk at U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and at the Supreme Court of the United States.

About the 2026 Lecture

For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, a decision hailed by the right as a triumph of conservative colorblindness and decried by the left as requiring the end of racial equity. 

Both sides, Yale Law School professor Justin Driver contends, are wrong. Perversely, even when viewed through a conservative lens, the Court’s decision ushers in a less desirable admissions regime. The post-SFFA model places a new premium on students of color voicing their racial trauma in elaborate application essays, entrenching the very racial victimization and essentialism that conservatives purport to loathe. 

The Trump Administration’s assault on higher education has been fueled by distorted readings of SFFA, further clouding the opinion’s already opaque meaning. But SFFA, properly understood, leaves universities significant legal room to combat Trump’s anti-D.E.I. onslaught by adopting innovative policies that foster diversity—including preferences for descendants of slavery, members of tribes, and applicants from blighted communities. Far from a mere eulogy, The Fall of Affirmative Action provides a blueprint for the future—a rallying cry for citizens to forge new paths to inclusion and push back against the notion that racial equity is doomed. The death of affirmative action, Driver insists, need not mean the death of opportunity.

Who was Derrick Bell?

A national thought leader on civil rights and the understanding of racism and American law, Derrick Bell was a historic choice as Oregon Law’s first Black dean. Bell served as dean from 1981-85, resigning in protest of the school’s decision to not offer a faculty position to an Asian American woman. Prior to his time at Oregon Law, Bell published the original casebook for teaching race-related law courses, “Race, Racism, and American Law,” which is now a standard textbook in US law schools. 

Oregon Law hosted the first Derrick Bell Lecture in 2013 to showcase scholars working in the areas of civil rights and race in the law, in legal education, and in the legal profession. In 2017, the Derrick Bell Lecture became part of the UO African American Workshop and Lecture Series, sponsored by the Division of Equity and Inclusion and the Office of the President.  

Bell is considered one of the most influential voices in the foundation of Critical Race Theory, a framework that examines society and culture as they connect to race, law, and power. 

The Derrick Bell Lecture is sponsored by the University of Oregon Division of Equity and Inclusion and is part of the annual African American Workshop and Lecture Series.