Professor Ellen Berrey was recently featured in an article in the Christian Science Monitor by Stacy Teicher Khadaroo. The article concerns recent controversies in the USA surrounding affirmative action practices in college admissions. The article explores the debates around affirmative action in the context of US higher education institutions with reference to Professor Berrey's research. Professor Berrey studies the effect of law, organizational practices, and culture on inequality. She has published work on diversity discourse, affirmative action policies, employment discrimination litigation, corporate social responsibility, and urban gentrification.
We have posted an excerpt of the article below.
A sticky week for college admissions as affirmative action debate heats up
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo | Aug. 3, 2017
Los Angeles; Cambridge, Mass.; Nashua, N.H.
The waters of the affirmative action debate – left relatively undisturbed since a Supreme Court decision upheld its constitutionality last year – were again agitated this week.
The trigger: a leaked internal document from the Department of Justice that signaled to some that the Trump administration is devoting resources to the anti-affirmative action cause. Others say that’s an overblown reaction to an innocuous move to investigate one claim by Asian-Americans.
Today, the majority of top-tier universities maintain a strong commitment to the value of diversity and the narrow use of race in admissions to achieve that. But the steady drumbeat of criticism from those who believe society should be colorblind may have contributed to what new research has found: The percentage of competitive institutions publicly stating that they factor race into admissions has dramatically declined....
From 1994 to 2014, the percentage of selective colleges and universities that publicly state they use race in admissions has declined from more than 60 percent to just 35 percent, researchers Daniel Hirschman of Brown and Ellen Berrey of the University of Toronto found in a paper published in June. The decline has been strongest among lowest tier of competitive schools.
Read the full article here.