This brief is part of the Affirming Equity, Ensuring Inclusion, and Empowering Action initiative. This brief is focused on holistic review, a strategy in college admissions that assesses an applicant's unique experiences alongside a range of indicators that include grades, extra curriculars, environmental context, among other factors. For…

Through a critical discourse analysis of three Asian American organizations' rhetoric around race and education, we explore the activism of Asian Americans working against affirmative action and other race-based educational policies. We examine the way these groups engage ideological discourses regarding race, civil rights, and the freedom to…

This study focuses on how admissions at selective colleges and universities represent key racialized organizations. We analyzed data from 50 individual interviews of admissions professionals, through a theory of racialized organizations to recognize admissions as practices that consistently reproduces systemic inequities. We reveal how…

Racial preferences, as practiced in academia and elsewhere, by definition, discriminates against individuals based on their race. Radical academics and writers, including the founders of critical race theory, have long supported the use of race as a predominant factor in postsecondary and graduate school admissions. If the Court rules as it should…

Despite being academically unqualified for admission to the University of Texas at Austin, Abigail Fisher, a White female, argued that she was not admitted due to the university's diversity policy. In addition to framing postsecondary admissions as a zero-sum phenomenon, Ms. Fisher intentionally frames students of color who are admitted to the…

With a decision pending in two lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), many observers are predicting that the US Supreme Court will significantly limit, if not completely prohibit, the use of race in college and university admissions. However if the United…

Different from more traditional policy-making avenues, the courts provide an antipolitical arena that does not require broad agreement from various constituents for policy enactment. Seeking to guide court decisions on these policy issues, individuals and organizations have filed "amicus" briefs that increasingly include social science…

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…

Although affirmative action in college admissions has not been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the consideration of race in admissions has been banned in nine states--in six of them by public vote. This article analyzes the campaigns to ban affirmative action in California and Michigan as a battle between interest groups. The…

This essay discusses the contentious events leading to the decision by the University of California's Board of Regents to end affirmative action in admissions, hiring and contracting at the university in July 1995. This controversial decision provided momentum for California's passage of Proposition 209 the following year ending "racial…

This manuscript describes an approach to critical qualitative data analysis that combines (1) Carspecken's critical qualitative methodological framework with (2) the conceptual resources of critical discourse analysis (CDA), as framed by Fairclough and colleagues. Carspecken's methodological theory illuminates the connection between sociopolitical…

Of all college admission criteria, scores on nationally normed tests like the SAT and ACT are most affected by the socioeconomic background of the student. The effect of socioeconomic background on test scores has grown substantially at University of California over the past two decades, and tests have become more of a barrier to admission of…

Despite being academically unqualified for admission to the University of Texas at Austin, Abigail Fisher, a White female, argued that she was not admitted due to the university's diversity policy. In addition to framing post-secondary admissions as a zero-sum phenomenon, Ms. Fisher intentionally framed students of color who are admitted to the…

At the heart of the longstanding debate of addressing racial inequities in higher education is an argument about whether race should be a factor in admissions decisions. One argument is that institutions should be held accountable for diversity through external policies like affirmative action. Alternatively, there is the position that…

This article examines the intersection of race, socioeconomic status (SES), and charter type/admission practices in Louisiana charter schools. This study used publicly available Department of Education data to compile the sample of charter school demographic information. A one-way Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was conducted using race and…