Last month, twenty-seven former top-ranking officers including, Generals Schwarzkopf and Zinni, submitted a brief to the Supreme Court supporting race-conscious admissions by selective universities.

In the most pivotal affirmative action ruling in decades, the Court is weighing two cases that challenge the University of Michigan's race-conscious admissions policies. Against the backdrop of the war in Iraq, it is reported that several justices are keenly interested in how affirmative action affects national security.

While affirmative action may be under fire from some quarters, it's not coming from the military. Central to maintaining a unified and effective fighting force, they argue, is balanced racial representation between the enlisted ranks and the officer corps. And, they contend, because the military academies recruit officers who are both highly qualified and racially diverse from the nation's selective universities, it is imperative that institutions of higher education use limited race-conscious recruiting and admissions procedures.

The result of race-blind university admissions would be disastrous, says the military brief. Such policies could herald a return to the racially divisive Vietnam era military, when minority underrepresentation in the officer corps resulted in racial tensions that ignited into racially motivated incidents and disciplinary disasters.

• In 1962, only 1.6% of officers were African American. By 1975, that number had only increased to 3%.
  
  
• Today, almost 40% of the armed forces are ethnic minorities. 19% of officers are of minority standing.

Many military officers believe that diversity is not an abstract academic aim but a combat imperative. Should we alter the guidelines that military leaders insist are critical to our superior fighting force? Does the military's need for race-conscious recruiting meet the key Court criterion for accepting diversity as a compelling governmental interest?