Race, Law, and Higher Education in the Colorblind Era


Book Description

This book provides detailed analysis of Supreme Court judgments which have impacted the rights of minorities in relation to higher education, and so illustrates ongoing issues of racial discrimination throughout the American education sector. Race, Law, and Higher Education in the Colorblind Era brings together the many racial disputes that have been adjudicated by the Supreme Court to investigate the politics of colorblindness in the post-civil rights era. Through a reading of these various cases as a form of continuing racial discourse, this book focuses on the ways in which racial disputes operate within a clearly entwined colorblind narrative that invalidates racial justice for minorities. By investigating how the Supreme Court has understood racism and the concept of race across its history, this volume demonstrates how colleges and universities must navigate the often contradictory and perilous landscape of ‘diversity’ in attempts to integrate historically disadvantaged minorities. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of sociology of education, multicultural education, and legal education.




Race, Law, and Higher Education in the Colorblind Era


Book Description

This book provides detailed analysis of Supreme Court judgments which have impacted the rights of minorities in relation to higher education, and so illustrates ongoing issues of racial discrimination throughout the American education sector. Race, Law, and Higher Education in the Colorblind Era brings together the many racial disputes that have been adjudicated by the Supreme Court to investigate the politics of colorblindness in the post-civil rights era. Through a reading of these various cases as a form of continuing racial discourse, this book focuses on the ways in which racial disputes operate within a clearly entwined colorblind narrative that invalidates racial justice for minorities. By investigating how the Supreme Court has understood racism and the concept of race across its history, this volume demonstrates how colleges and universities must navigate the often contradictory and perilous landscape of ‘diversity’ in attempts to integrate historically disadvantaged minorities. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of sociology of education, multicultural education, and legal education.




The Walls Around Opportunity


Book Description

The case for race-conscious education policy In our unequal society, families of color fully share the dream of college but their children often attend schools that do not prepare them, and the higher education system gives the best opportunities to the most privileged. Students of color hope for college but often face a dead end. For many young people, racial inequality puts them at a disadvantage from early childhood. The Walls around Opportunity argues that colorblind policies have made college inaccessible to a large share of students of color, and reveals how policies that acknowledge racial inequalities and set racial equality goals can succeed where colorblindness has failed. Gary Orfield paints a troubling portrait of American higher education, explaining how profound racial gaps imbedded in virtually every stage of our children’s lives pose a major threat to communities of color and the nation. He describes how the 1960s and early 1970s was the only period in history to witness sustained efforts at racial equity in higher education, and how the Reagan era ushered in today’s colorblind policies, which ignore the realities of color inequality. Orfield shows how this misguided policy has resegregated public schools, exacerbated inequalities in college preparation, denied needed financial aid to families, and led to huge price increases over decades that have seen little real gain in income for most Americans. Now with a new afterword that discusses the 2023 Supreme Court decision to outlaw affirmative action in college admissions, this timely and urgent book shows that the court’s colorblind ruling is unworkable in a society where every aspect of opportunity and preparation is linked to race, and reveals the gaps in the opportunity pipeline while exploring the best ways to address them in light of this decision.




White Balance


Book Description

The racial ideology of colorblindness has a long history. In 1963, Martin Luther King famously stated, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." However, in the decades after the civil rights movement, the ideology of colorblindness co-opted the language of the civil rights era in order to reinvent white supremacy, fuel the rise of neoliberalism, and dismantle the civil rights movement's legal victories without offending political decorum. Yet, the spread of colorblindness could not merely happen through political speeches, newspapers, or books. The key, Justin Gomer contends, was film--as race-conscious language was expelled from public discourse, Hollywood provided the visual medium necessary to dramatize an anti–civil rights agenda over the course of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In blockbusters like Dirty Harry, Rocky, and Dangerous Minds, filmmakers capitalized upon the volatile racial, social, and economic struggles in the decades after the civil rights movement, shoring up a powerful, bipartisan ideology that would be wielded against race-conscious policy, the memory of black freedom struggles, and core aspects of the liberal state itself.







Seeing Race Again


Book Description

Every academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines’ research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position. This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies, Seeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.




Higher Education in Nepal


Book Description

This book presents a showcase of discussions and critical perspectives about Nepalese higher education. Its chapters cover topics such as the impacts of local sociopolitical changes and global forces on public and private education, emerging online and distance education, administrative and intellectual leadership, quality assessment, graduate employability, global mobility of students, and the contributions of global diaspora of Nepalese scholars. The central questions of the book are: What are some of the local and global academic interactions in Nepalese higher education and what are the current challenges and pathways for advancements and improvements? How can Nepalese higher education absorb twenty-first century values of quality education as external forces, while adapting new developments to local needs? How can scholars interested in Nepalese, South Asian, and international higher education create opportunities for scholarship and professional collaboration around research on higher education in this region of South Asia? What issues and perspectives can research and scholarship about Nepal’s higher education offer to international discourse in higher education? The book offers information and resources to international educators interested in the dynamics of Nepalese and, by implication, South Asian higher education by introducing key challenges in policy and programs, innovative changes in curricula, effective approaches in technology application, and strategies for future integration of global reforms in education.




Post-Recession Community College Reform


Book Description

The book analyses and evaluates several key community college reform programs that emerged after the Recession of 2008 and as a result of major initiatives in California, New York, Tennessee, Florida, Connecticut and Wisconsin. Because of the economic downturn in the early 21st Century, an already eroding financial base for public higher education saw even further losses. At the same time, enrollments were booming, particularly in the two-year sector where many students who would have traditionally forgone a college education, were now enrolling to ensure their competitiveness in a harsh labor market. Chapters in this book examine the development and implementation of initiatives and accountability measures imposed across the states by the Obama administration, and consider their effectiveness in reducing the impact of the loss of students, and their role in improving courses. This book will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers exploring the history of education in the United States, as well as academic administrators, faculty, and policy-makers with an interest in reform-based practices that have been successfully implemented in community colleges.




The Dispositif of the University Reform


Book Description

The Dispositif of the University Reform presents a discourse analysis about transformations in higher education in Poland. Combining Foucauldian categories of discourse, dispositif and governmentality with contemporary changes in the area of science and higher education, it proposes an analysis of power in close connection with the development of knowledge. The book researches the tradition built on the works of Michel Foucault, one of the most prominent and inspiring researchers for the contemporary humanities. It introduces the Polish context to the international debate on higher education transformations and the reception of Foucauldian categories in social research. In addition, it presents the original concept of the dispositif of the reform as a heuristic model of describing and explaining the practice of regulating academic life and education policy. As a valuable contribution to the knowledge about the legitimization of educational policy and the practice formed by dominant discourses, the book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and post graduate students in the fields of sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, critical pedagogy, public policy, educational studies, and philosophy.




DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education


Book Description

This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.” Contributors: D.L. Adams, Susan Baglieri, Stephen J. Ball, Alicia Broderick, Kathleen M. Collins, Nirmala Erevelles, Edward Fergus, Zanita E. Fenton, David Gillborn, Kris Guitiérrez, Kathleen A. King Thorius, Elizabeth Kozleski, Zeus Leonardo, Claustina Mahon-Reynolds, Elizabeth Mendoza, Christina Paguyo, Laurence Parker, Nicola Rollock, Paolo Tan, Sally Tomlinson, and Carol Vincent “With a stunning set of authors, this book provokes outrage and possibility at the rich intersection of critical race, class, and disability studies, refracting back on educational policy and practices, inequities and exclusions but marking also spaces for solidarities. This volume is a must-read for preservice, and long-term educators, as the fault lines of race, (dis)ability, and class meet in the belly of educational reform movements and educational justice struggles.” —Michelle Fine, distinguished professor of Critical Psychology and Urban Education, The Graduate Center, CUNY “Offers those who sincerely seek to better understand the complexity of the intersection of race/ethnicity, dis/ability, social class, and gender a stimulating read that sheds new light on the root of some of our long-standing societal and educational inequities.” —Wanda J. Blanchett, distinguished professor and dean, Rutgers University, Graduate School of Education