When I became president of the University of Michigan, affirmative action in higher education was under siege. Buoyed by a successful lawsuit against the University of Texas law school's admission policy and by ballot initiatives such as California's Proposition 209, which outlawed race as a factor in college admissions, the opponents set their sights on affirmative-action programs at college across the country. The rumor that Michigan would be the next target in this campaign turned out to be correct. I believed strongly that we had no choice but to mount the best legal defense ever for diversity in higher education and take special efforts to explain this complex issue, in simple and direct language, to the American public. There are many mispereeptions about how race and ethnieity are considered in college admissions. Competitive colleges and universities are always looking for a mix of students with different experiences and backgrounds — academic, geographic, international, socioeconomic, athletic, public-service oriented, and, yes, racial and ethnic. It is true that in sorting the initial rush of applications, large universities will give 'points' for various factors in the selection process in order to ensure fairness as various officers review applicants. Opponents of Michigan's undergraduate system complain that an applicant is assigned more points for being black, Hispanic, or Native American than for having a perfect SAT score. This is true, but it trivializes the real issue: whether, in principle, race and ethnicity are appropriate considerations. The simple fact about the Michigan undergraduate policy is that it gives overwhelming weight to traditional academic factors — some 110 out of a total of 150 points. After that, there are some 40 points left for other factors, of which 20 can be allocated for race or socioeconomic status. Race has been a defining element of the American experience. The historic Brown v. Board of Education decision is almost 50 years old, yet metropolitan Detroit is more segregated now than it was in 1960. The majority of students who each year arrive on a campus like Michigan graduated from virtually all-white or all-black high schools. The campus is their first experience living in an integrated environment. Diversity is not merely a desirable addition to a well-rounded education. It is as essential as the study of the Middle Ages, of international politics, and of Shakespeare. For our students to better understand the diverse country and world they inhabit, they must be immersed in a campus culture that allows them to study with, argue with, and become friends with students who may be different from them. It broadens the mind, and the intellect-essential goals of education. Reasonable people can disagree about affirmative action. But it is important that we do not lose the sense of history, the compassion and the largeness of vision that defined the best of the civil-rights era, which has given rise to so much of what is good about America today. This passage is mainly______.