Discusses how the Supreme Court will hear two cases involving racial preferences at the University of Michigan, with the fate of affirmative action in college admission in the balance. (EV)

Discusses the issues surrounding affirmative action and racial preference policies. Includes interviews with civil rights lawyers, researchers, professors, and members of Congress. Suggests that even without specific quotas, businesses, advertisers, and institutions will strive for diversity in their workforces. (JOW)

Discusses diversity in the workforce and examines methods of managing diversity efforts, including the use of appropriate interventions. The relationship of managing diversity to Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity programs is considered; and an upcoming series of articles on diversity is described. (two references) (LRW)

Introduces a theme issue that includes a collection of articles on work being done to prevent movement backward in efforts to gain equal educational opportunity for minority group students, discussing affirmative action, racial discrimination and bias, and equity in higher education (with a focus on California's efforts to roll back affirmative…

Describes how the dean of undergraduate admission at the University of Michigan brings both passion and pragmatism to his position, valuable assets as the university fights two lawsuits in its struggle to retain its affirmative action-friendly admission policies. (EV)

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for "lower-caste" groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially…

Using policy discourse analysis, the author analyzed 21 diversity action plans issued at 20 U.S. land-grant universities over a five-year period to identify images of diversity and the problems and solutions represented in diversity action plans. Discourses of marketplace, excellence, managerialism, and democracy emerged and served to construct…

Public higher education has undergone a process similar to that in the national polity: a one-sided struggle by those with power to shape the institution to be more market driven, more focused on what will generate (non-state) revenues, more dominated by top administrators, and less concerned about the working class and people of color. This…

In recent years, corporate executives and local bar association officials have increasingly questioned why so few of the nation's elite corporate law firms can claim significant racial and ethnic diversity among their partner or upper management ranks. Some organizations have even pledged to reward law firms that ensure high-level assignments for…

Despite its relatively short history, policies connected with Affirmative Action have endured a controversial social, political, and legal past. Higher education has witnessed much of this controversy firsthand. Because the venue of many Affirmative Action battles has been waged within educational settings, faculty in higher education are uniquely…

Affirmative action, a controversial topic about which students have many misconceptions, lends itself especially well to a sociological analysis. This paper describes an approach to teaching that: (1) informs students of different affirmative action programs; (2) gives them the opportunity to apply and integrate a variety of concepts and research…

This chapter explores alternative solutions for selective institutions of higher education to reach beyond their traditional admission measures and identify diverse students who might otherwise not be selected by traditional admission criteria.

The purpose of this Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) report is twofold: to provide an analysis of the enrollment trends for African American and Latino students among graduate professional programs in the fields of medicine, business, law, and public affairs, and to present other relevant data pertaining to African American and Latino students…

The question addressed in this petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court is "When only a small fraction of thousands of applicants can be admitted, does the equal protection clause forbid a state university professional school faculty from voluntarily seeking to counteract effects of generations of pervasive discrimination…

Summarized is Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 which required any company with a U.S. government contract over $2,500 to take affirmative action toward hiring the handicapped. (LS)