Editing Lani Guinier (section)

===Revising affirmative action===
From 2001 until her death, Guinier was active in civil rights in higher education, coining the term "confirmative action" to reconceptualize issues of diversity, fairness, and [[affirmative action]].  The process of confirmative action, she said, "ties diversity to the admissions criteria for all students, whatever their race, gender, or ethnic background&mdash;including people of color, working-class whites, and even children of privilege."<ref>Guinier (2001), [http://minerscanary.org/mainart/highered.shtml "Colleges Should Take 'Confirmative Action' in Admissions"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020628190009/http://minerscanary.org/mainart/highered.shtml |date=June 28, 2002 }}, ''Chronicle of Higher Education''. Retrieved on February 28, 2011.</ref>

Because public and private institutions of higher learning are almost all to some extent publicly funded (i.e., federal [[student loan]]s and research grants), Guinier argued that the nation has a vested interest in seeing that all students have access to higher education and that these graduates "contribute as leaders in our democratic polity." By linking diversity to merit, Guinier argued that preferential treatment of minority students "confirms the public character and democratic missions of higher-education institutions. Diversity becomes relevant not only to the college's admissions process but also to its students' educational experiences and to what its graduates actually contribute to American society."<ref>Guinier (2001), [http://minerscanary.org/mainart/highered.shtml "Colleges Should Take 'Confirmative Action' in Admissions"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020628190009/http://minerscanary.org/mainart/highered.shtml |date=June 28, 2002 }}, ''Chronicle of Higher Education''. Retrieved on December 9, 2008.</ref>