It's more like poisoning the guard dog. You do it because you're coming for more later.
There's going to be some genuine rage when AA is overturned 5-4. It only barely won 5-4 last time it came up, and that was with Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor (actually another case decided at the same time seriously curtailed AA of the exact sort some "elite" universities are currently using that explicitly discriminate based on race and effectively were trying to bring back the old pure quota systems used on Jews).
The Court is now considerably more conservative, has at least four members that have said explicitly they would do away with it, with Amy Coney Barrett likely giving them a fifth. The very least they do with such a case is overturn the current Harvard scheme based on the 6-3 ruling throwing out that kind of scheme, and it's entirely possible they overturn the entire regime. The 6-3 case,
Gratz, was clear enough even Breyer joined with the majority in a separate concurrence with O'Connor.
O'Connor was the swing vote in the 5-4 case,
Grutter, which also involved the University of Michigan. After O'Connor retired, Kennedy had been the swing vote. With the current composition of the Court, it is unlikely Roberts would even get a chance to be a swing vote were he so inclined, but he might try to negotiate a compromise in which AA is otherwise untouched but the overtly illegal schemes currently adopted are struck down.
Here's the
docket in the Harvard case. Unless they choose not to hear it (but the fact they have just asked the Acting Solicitor General to file a brief indicates they will, they'll be deciding this:
Issues: (1) Whether the Supreme Court should overrule
Grutter v. Bollinger and hold that institutions of higher education cannot use race as a factor in admissions; and (2) whether Harvard College is violating
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian-American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasizing race and rejecting workable race-neutral alternatives.
My spitball guess would be yes, obviously as to (2) and maybe as to (1).
Either way there will be a shitstorm of epic proportions unless they completely cuck and decide not to hear it.