On the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this Article argues for a renewed focus on disadvantage and social mobility in passage of the Civil Rights Act and originally advocated affirmative action, the goals of rooting out discrimination and ensuring social mobility for all Americans motivated him. Over time, these goals receded in law and policy. Courts justified affirmative action on grounds of diversity. More recently, commentators urged consideration of "class-based" affirmative action or advocated policies that favor "low-income" students. Both initiatives can help open up access to selective institutions of higher education. However, neither is a dependable proxy for disadvantage in education. Race-based affirmative action justified on grounds of diversity is a vital tool for ameliorating racial inequality, but it does not necessarily address class-based disadvantage. Class- or income-based policies do not necessarily benefit the neediest students. The demographic makeup of selective institutions of higher education today suggests that neither effort is particularly effective in ensuring social mobility. Campuses are more racially heterogeneous, but largely economically homogeneous. If the social mobility objectives of the Civil Rights Act are to be more fully realized, universities must supplement current admissions and aid policies. Today's costly, ultra-competitive, and strategically managed admissions environment makes it even more vital to create pathways for talented students from truly disadvantaged backgrounds to selective institutions. To avoid the crowding out of the neediest students, disadvantage must be identified more precisely and attacked at its roots instead of indirectly. Favorable treatment of first-generation, Pell Grant-eligible students in three areas - admissions, financial aid, and institutional outreach - can facilitate greater access for truly educationally disadvantaged students. Through initiatives focused on these students, colleges can simultaneously tackle social problems related to income, socio-culture, place, and race, advance equal educational opportunity and pursue the national interest in social mobility.

With the goal of building more inclusive working, learning, and living environments in higher education, this book seeks to reframe understandings of forms of everyday exclusion that affect members of nondominant groups on predominantly white college campuses. The book contextualizes the need for a more robust analysis of persistent patterns of campus inequality by addressing key trends that have reshaped the landscape for diversity, including rapid demographic change, reduced public spending on higher education, and a polarized political climate. Specifically, it offers a critique of contemporary analytical ideas such as micro-aggressions and implicit and unconscious bias and underscores the impact of consequential discriminatory events (or macro-aggressions) and racial and gender-based inequalities (macro-inequities) on members of nondominant groups. The authors draw extensively upon interview studies and qualitative research findings to illustrate the reproduction of social inequality through behavioral and process-based outcomes in the higher education environment. They identify a more powerful systemic framework and conceptual vocabulary that can be used for meaningful change. In addition, the book highlights coping and resistance strategies that have regularly enabled members of nondominant groups to address, deflect, and counteract everyday forms of exclusion. The book offers concrete approaches, concepts, and tools that will enable higher education leaders to identify, address, and counteract persistent structural and behavioral barriers to inclusion. As such, it shares a series of practical recommendations that will assist presidents, provosts, executive officers, boards of trustees, faculty, administrators, diversity officers, human resource leaders, diversity taskforces, and researchers as they seek to implement comprehensive strategies that result in sustained diversity change.

With the goal of building more inclusive working, learning, and living environments in higher education, this book seeks to reframe understandings of forms of everyday exclusion that affect members of nondominant groups on predominantly white college campuses. The book contextualizes the need for a more robust analysis of persistent patterns of campus inequality by addressing key trends that have reshaped the landscape for diversity, including rapid demographic change, reduced public spending on higher education, and a polarized political climate. Specifically, it offers a critique of contemporary analytical ideas such as micro-aggressions and implicit and unconscious bias and underscores the impact of consequential discriminatory events (or macro-aggressions) and racial and gender-based inequalities (macro-inequities) on members of nondominant groups. The authors draw extensively upon interview studies and qualitative research findings to illustrate the reproduction of social inequality through behavioral and process-based outcomes in the higher education environment. They identify a more powerful systemic framework and conceptual vocabulary that can be used for meaningful change. In addition, the book highlights coping and resistance strategies that have regularly enabled members of nondominant groups to address, deflect, and counteract everyday forms of exclusion. The book offers concrete approaches, concepts, and tools that will enable higher education leaders to identify, address, and counteract persistent structural and behavioral barriers to inclusion. As such, it shares a series of practical recommendations that will assist presidents, provosts, executive officers, boards of trustees, faculty, administrators, diversity officers, human resource leaders, diversity taskforces, and researchers as they seek to implement comprehensive strategies that result in sustained diversity change. avioral and process-based outcomes in the higher education environment. They identify a more powerful systemic framework and conceptual vocabulary that can be used for meaningful change. In addition, the book highlights coping and resistance strategies that have regularly enabled members of nondominant groups to address, deflect, and counteract everyday forms of exclusion. The book offers concrete approaches, concepts, and tools that will enable higher education leaders to identify, address, and counteract persistent structural and behavioral barriers to inclusion. As such, it shares a series of practical recommendations that will assist presidents, provosts, executive officers, boards of trustees, faculty, administrators, diversity officers, human resource leaders, diversity taskforces, and researchers as they seek to implement comprehensive strategies that result in sustained diversity change.

Issues of diversity and affirmative action have turned elite higher education in the United States into contested terrain. Rights revolutions in the country have raised hopes that have proved difficult to fulfill. Most particularly, expectations about access and opportunity--redressing the unfairness of the past--have collided with widely held beliefs: that educational institutions should treat each person fairly as an individual and should promote high academic standards. Promise and Dilemma gathers the reflections of a group of leading educators on whether and how objectives of diversity, equity, and excellence can be simultaneously pursued. Empirical in orientation, these essays focus on constructive proposals and on the role of social and political consensus. Furthermore, they contrast what we believe we know with what empirical data and institutional experience can teach us. Eugene Lowe's substantive introduction reviews the history of the practice of affirmative action in colleges and universities. The other essays are by L. Scott Miller of The College Board; Mamphela Ramphele, vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town; Neil J. Smelser of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford; and Claude M. Steele of Stanford University. Also included are commentaries by Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School; Richard J. Light, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Chang-Lin Tien, the University of California, Berkeley; and Philip Uri Treisman, the University of Texas.

Diversity has been a focus of higher education policy, law, and scholarship for decades, continually expanding to include not only race, ethnicity and gender, but also socioeconomic status, sexual and political orientation, and more. However, existing collections still tend to focus on a narrow definition of diversity in education, or in relation to singular topics like access to higher education, financial aid, and affirmative action. By contrast, Diversity in American Higher Education captures in one volume the wide range of critical issues that comprise the current discourse on diversity on the college campus in its broadest sense. This edited collection explores: legal perspectives on diversity and affirmative action higher education's relationship to the deeper roots of K-12 equity and access policy, politics, and practice's effects on students, faculty, and staff. Bringing together the leading experts on diversity in higher education scholarship, Diversity in American Higher Education redefines the agenda for diversity as we know it today.

In The Future of Diversity , distinguished academic leaders, heads of universities and foundations as well as faculty with valuable research and personal experience, discuss the next stage in the pursuit of democratic diversity and excellence on our campuses across the country.

Drawing upon quantitative data gathered from the U.S. Census and U.S. Department of Education, as well as interviews with students from a variety of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds, Low-Income Students and the Perpetuation of Inequality examines the question of who really benefits from public higher education. It engages with questions of social capital, opportunity, funding and access to education, presenting a rich discussion of social mobility, the value of college education and the impact of education upon the redistribution of income. A thorough exploration of the real impact of college on American society, this volume will appeal to social scientists with interests in education, social capital, social stratification, class and social mobility.