The Supreme Court is taking up affirmative action at colleges and universities for the sixth time in 50 years. In that litany, an early case was the University of California vs. Bakke. Bakke complained about being denied admission to the university's medical school because seats were guaranteed for minority applicants, thus barring the door to him and other white applicants. When the Bakke case was on the Court's docket, John Kemeny was president of Dartmouth College. The Dartmouth Board wanted a public statement by the college on Bakke. Given their strong confidence in Kemeny, they gave him sole authority to craft Dartmouth's stand on affirmative action. Kemeny's voice from his bully pulpit into the public square about the Bakke case echoes today. Kemeny's argument displays ahead-of-the-curve insights. His major concern, one still very much at stake in the outcome of the Court's deliberations today, was that colleges had to be able to maintain their fundamental purposes in the face of any Court judgment.