Race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action attracted little interest from the leaders of 48 colleges who met on Wednesday at Harvard University to discuss the fallout from last month's U.S. Supreme Court decisions dealing with race-conscious college admissions.

Several of those present said they planned to focus on finding ways to shield race-conscious admissions policies against future legal challenges, rather than experimenting with the alternatives to affirmative action being promoted by the Bush administration and some conservative activists.

"Universities and their diversity policies will continue, and are continuing, to come under attacks," said Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan, which was the focus of the recent Supreme Court battles and a sponsor of the meeting. Higher education "needs to dedicate itself to what is right," Ms. Coleman said.

Wednesday's gathering was the first of several that higher-education groups have scheduled in the coming months to guide colleges in responding to the Supreme Court's decisions involving the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Joining Michigan in sponsoring the event were the Harvard Civil Rights Project, the American Council on Education, and the Association of American Universities.

The Supreme Court upheld the concept of using race-conscious admissions in two cases involving Michigan's law school and chief undergraduate college, but struck down the undergraduate admissions policy -- a point system that awarded certain minority applicants a 20-point bonus on a 150-point scale -- after concluding that the system was too mechanistic and did not give applicants enough individual consideration (The Chronicle, July 4, 2001).

The majority opinion in the law-school case, written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, held that colleges should give "serious, good-faith consideration" to race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action before adopting race-conscious admissions policies. The opinion also said that race-conscious admissions policies "must have a logical end point" and that "the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary" to achieve diversity on campuses in 25 years.

Supporters and critics of affirmative action have offered markedly different legal interpretations of the Supreme Court's rulings. So far, much of the debate has centered on the following questions: How strongly must colleges consider race-neutral alternatives? What makes a race-conscious admissions policy too mechanistic? And how rigid, and realistic, is the court's instruction that there should be no need for race-conscious admissions policies in 25 years?

"The arguments and fights are going to be about whether race-conscious policies are necessary, and what kinds are necessary in order to achieve diversity," Gary Orfield, the co-director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, predicted on Wednesday.

Although the meeting was off-limits to the media, the sponsors held a news conference afterwards to summarize the day's discussions, and participants privately and publicly elaborated on what had happened.

The day's discussions were generally described as intense. The event's leaders said that much of the participants' attention focused on how colleges can best justify racial and ethnic diversity as central to their missions. Those on hand also discussed several areas in which they saw a need for additional research, such as the appropriate use of testing, the question of how to define academic "merit," and how colleges can make the best use of diversity on campuses.

The discussion of legal and policy issues was described as fairly preliminary, with many key questions being defined, but few being clearly answered. Jared L. Cohon, the president of Carnegie Mellon University, said that he encountered "a shared sense by all of us that there is a great deal left to be done" in responding to the Supreme Court's decisions.

Justice O'Connor's admonition regarding race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action barely came up, meeting participants said. Representatives of the University of California, which is precluded from considering race in admissions as a result of a 1996 ballot initiative, told the group that the race-neutral alternatives that they have tried have proven inadequate as means of promoting diversity. Nancy Schrom Dye, the president of Oberlin College, said "none of the programs" being discussed as alternatives to affirmative action "would have a beneficial effect" at her institution.

However, in an interview on Wednesday, Curt A. Levey, director of legal and public affairs for the Center for Individual Rights, argued that colleges must consider race-neutral alternatives more seriously. "A good-faith effort does not mean declaring three weeks after the decision that there is nothing we can do," said Mr. Levey, whose organization represented the rejected white applicants who sued Michigan.

The leaders of the Harvard gathering also said that participants discussed the 25-year deadline for race-conscious admissions suggested by the Supreme Court, and concluded that broader societal changes are needed if the deadline is to be met.

Nils Hasselmo, the president of the Association of American Universities, said the Supreme Court "has placed a great responsibility on our universities ... to address the performance gap that exists in our society."