The statement, which is contained in an advertisement in The New York Times Thursday, expressed the group's "strong conviction concerning the continuing need to take into account a wide range of considerations -- including ethnicity, race and gender -- as we evaluate the students whom we select for admission."
Dr. Neil L. Rudenstine, the president of Harvard University, proposed last year that the association consider the issue.
"The higher education community generally," Rudenstine said, "and our group of 62 universities in particular, had not said anything about our position. We thought we should be on the record when things are still more fluid."
Despite bans in California and Texas on using race in admissions, many educators say affirmative action remains the best way to insure diversity on their campuses. The association's statement said that the actions in California and Texas, together with public debate about diversity, created "substantial uncertainty about the future representation of minority students within our student bodies."
Rudenstine said that members of the association were concerned that there was a widespread misunderstanding that college admissions were based on test scores and grades and little else.
"But it's more complicated than that," he said, adding that Harvard uses race, sex and ethnicity, along with many other factors like character and leadership, in seeking a diverse student body.
A Supreme Court decision allows colleges to take these factors into account, he said, "as long as there are no quotas or two-track systems, and there is a consistency of attention to individual applicants, not groups."
Dr. Robert M. Berdahl, the president of the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the AAU, was less optimistic about the potential impact of the association's position. It was his campus that was the object of the lawsuit involved in the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that barred the use of race as a factor in admissions.
"I don't think it will change the Fifth Circuit's ruling, Proposition 209 or the views of the regents in California," Berdahl said, referring to the California ballot initiative that banned the use of race and sex preferences in affirmative action programs run by the state. "But it does give me a reference point by saying that I'm not alone on this."
Berdahl is leaving Austin to become chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley this
summer.