This essay examines the significance of the fortuitous Fisher v. University of Texas Supreme Court decision within a broader historical framework of similar affirmative action legal disputes. The author locates Fisher among a historical trajectory of manoeuvres intended to destabilise modest Civil Rights Era advances toward racial justice.…

Racial and ethnic student body diversity is essential for medical schools to serve their educational mission of addressing racial and ethnic health inequities in the United States. Yet bans on the practice of affirmative action in six states have led to declines in students of color enrolled in medical schools. In this article, we examine prior…

The use of interpretative phenomenological analysis served as a lens to direct the researcher in making meaning of the experiences of African American college presidents leading predominantly White institutions with race-conscious affirmative action policies in higher education. This study was a chronicle of the voices of African American college…

How and when does affirmative action emerge in different national contexts? This paper is the first to analyze the emergence of affirmative action in higher education across national contexts. We find that three distinct clusters of affirmative action policies developed historically: (1) early nation-building projects, (2) mechanisms to attenuate…

The following essay details a debate between UC Berkeley and a Regent who made charges of discrimination against Asian American students that are similar to the current legal challenges facing Harvard University. The crux of such charges: on average, that one racial or ethnic group is more "qualified" than other groups, often…

In the context of a long history of racial exclusion, policies designed to address racial inequalities continue to face strong opposition. This is especially true in the higher education sector, where there is strong resistance to efforts specifically designed to rectify racial discrimination (e.g., race-based affirmative action). This report…

This paper investigates to what extent socioeconomic status (SES)-based affirmative action in college admissions can produce racial diversity. Using simulation models, we investigate the racial and socioeconomic distribution of students among colleges under the use of race- or SES-based affirmative action policies, or targeted, race-based…

Few studies have focused on the role of Asian Americans in influencing how race is understood in affirmative action debates. However, accounting for the complicating presence of Asian Americans in the racial politics of affirmative action has become increasingly important. Informed by racial formation theory, this critical discourse analysis of…

University administrators often strive for racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity in their student populations. Today, administrators face a new demographic challenge as women increasingly outnumber men in applications, enrollments, and graduation rates. This article discusses the causes and potential consequences of the growing gender…

Official rhetorics often highlight horizontality, solidarity, and shared interests as features of South-South cooperation (SSC), but scholars have argued that tensions shape SSC as much as North-South development relations. This study examines the Brazilian SSC discourse and its everyday practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a newly…

Previous policy analysis of the Top Ten Percent Plan (TTPP) has focused on the outcomes of the policy (e.g., Card & Krueger, 2005; Kain & O'Brien, 2004; Long, 2004), answering questions such as whether the TTPP led to increased or decreased access for particular groups. Absent from the literature is an analysis of the policy-change process…

Today's Chief Diversity Officers face tremendous challenges. Among those are threats to Affirmative Action admissions and financial aid programs, the dearth of faculty and staff of color in Predominantly White Institutions, the scarcity of funds to carry out institutional diversity mandates, and the need to play mentor to a vast array of…

This article uses philosophical analysis to clarify the arguments and claims about racial discrimination brought forward in the recent legal challenges to affirmative action in higher education admissions. Affirmative action opponents have argued that elite institutions of higher education are using negative action against Asian American…

The Supreme Court has established the parameters within which universities can practice race-conscious affirmative action for college admissions in a series of decisions beginning in l978. The key issues concern the educational impact of campus diversity and whether or not it is necessary to give some consideration to students' race into order to…

The University of Georgia has operated under a voluntary "race-neutral" admission policy for the past 2 decades. Using frame analysis theory, we examine university documents and interview data from 11 campus administrators responsible for diversity efforts to understand how diversity is framed at the institutional and individual levels…