Our cities face a choice: find creative ways to integrate today's technology into their DNA or have entire systems get left behind, widening the equality gulf for people who rely on them.
The two cases, which challenge the University of Michigan's use of race as a "plus factor" in undergraduate and law school admissions, have huge implications for the nation's efforts to widen racial equality and increase campus diversity by opening institutions of higher learning to more blacks and Hispanics.
The current buzzwords of social responsibility, equality and diversity, widening participation, impact, and knowledge transfer are all terms which have been foisted upon the privatised higher education sector to show that it is not merely looking to the sky but also to the ground upon which it stands.
If even here the trend shows the French wealth gap continuously widening, the implication for economics are profound: even equality before the law could not safeguard economic equality in capitalist societies.
It sets out expectations that governing bodies will commit to: autonomy, academic freedom, student interest, contractual service, accountability, equality and diversity, access and widening participation, and transparency.
There would seem to be no unduly concerning widening in inequalities, but further analyses of the equality of impact across population subgroups is warranted.
Arguably class divisions are getting worse: the new chair of the UK's equalities watchdog warned Britain can expect widening social divisions unless the government takes urgent action to tackle deep-rooted inequalities.
The pay gap between men and women is at risk of widening for the first time on record, a leading pay equality campaign group warns.
His chief concern is the fear that ever widening inequality will undermine our democracy: "Americans believe fervently in the value of social equality, and social equality is at risk when incomes become too dramatically unequal.... Growing income inequality makes it especially difficult to maintain any spirit of e pluribus unum".
The widening political inclusion is real, and it makes an implicit promise — that equality of opportunity is rising, that the world is everyone's oyster.
