"The Effects of That Decision Are Still Being Felt on College Campuses"

"Powell's jurisprudence upended the dominant view at the time, Brown says, that the Equal Protection Clause was aimed at helping 'discrete and minority groups,' including African-Americans, Asians, and Latinos. What that means is that 'when you applied the Fourteenth Amendment, it should come to a different result if blacks, for example, were going to be the beneficiaries, as opposed to the ones who were disadvantaged,' Brown says.
"Still, Justice Powell's opinion that these institutions could consider race in admissions, but only for purposes of diversity, took hold." 

Adam Harris at The Atlantic looks at "Justice Lewis Powell's ruling in the 1978 case Regents v. Bakke."