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This chapter looks at the most recent case to challenge affirmative action in college admissions policies in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin (2013 and 2016). Like chapter 5, the purpose of this chapter is to understand precisely what supporters and opponents are saying about the controversial policy. That is, how are they framing the debate surrounding affirmative action. However, this chapter looks at how framing may have changed over a decade later. We again focus on amicus briefs submitted by social authorities to the U.S. Supreme Court who had interests in the outcome of the cases. While we were interested in variation in types of frames used in these two cases (Fisher I and II) relative to the Gratz and Grutter cases, we mainly focused on authors continued use of both color-blind and group threat frames to state their positions. While some nuanced changes were observed from Gratz/Grutter to Fisher, our findings revealed a great deal of consistency from case to case and that the briefs continued to rely on color-blind and threat frames to characterize the policy. Particularly among opponents’ briefs, threat frames suggested that whites, in general, were losing in a country consumed by liberal agendas of diversification and entitlements only afforded to unqualified and ill-prepared non-whites.

Joshua Z. Gahr and Michael P. Young’s chapter provides a historical analysis of the somewhat counterintuitive, yet central, role that Protestant institutions played in the emergence of the new Left. Through a case study of the Christian Faith-and-Life Community at the University of Texas at Austin from 1955 to 1962, the chapter documents how a group of liberal Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist clergy pushed university students to reconceive the Church’s “mission-in-the-world” and their personal witness to this mission in ways that unleashed a moral “breakthrough.”

The attack on affirmative action has come from a select few individuals with resource. This fight was thought to have culminated with the end of affirmative action signaled by the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Supreme Court case. However, the policy received a surprising victory and continues to be an object of disdain by many conservatives today. With that being said, this chapter outlines the role of elite actors in framing prominent social issues, including affirmative action. This chapter also describes how certain frames may be used to not only minimize the discussion of race surrounding the policy but will also attempt to use threat and emotion to produce animosity in order to remove the policy from higher education.

This chapter discusses the Ruth Elvish Mantz Collection in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Mantz wrote the first biography of Mansfield in 1933, in conjunction with Mansfield’s husband, John Middleton Murry, who was brought in as a co-author by the publishers. The finished biography was not what she originally intended to write. She spent the rest of her life writing numerous unpublished manuscripts reworking the events of Mansfield’s life into book form. All her papers are now in Texas, and offer a fascinating insight into Mansfield’s first biographer.