Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Diversity Bargain 20170326

Series of the year and delighted with social professor at the graduate school of education. Dr. Is an expert on the relationship between education, racial and Ethnic Diversity and the cultural process and first book called balancing analyzing children of immigrants attending low performing high schools in new york city, and comparatively with london i wont go into details of the second book topic of our exciting her exciting talk today. In addition to her books, natasha has many, many, many, many papers that are published in journals and popular presses including american journal of education. British education ethnic and racial studies. L. A. Times and Washington Post as an aside for those of you of my students ive long assigned one of her pieces for our classes which is a beautiful review of the cultural explanation of educational equalities. She also has numerous number of grants awards from the sociological association, National Signs foundation, and Russell Stage Foundation. Completed her ph. D. In sociology and basm colors in science and arts in math and philosophy from brown university. Help me in warmly welcoming dr. Warku. Thank you for that nice introduction. It is really a delight to be here. I conceived of many of the ideas of this book when i was on leave at Russell Stage Foundation in new york a few years ago so its nice to be back having actually ridge written the book and it wasnt quite there yet a few years ago. So this book is about is there an echo in the room is that okay . Okay this book is about how students of elite universities makes sense of race, and inequality in the United States an britain. And it is really sort of a look, i realized i have no way i dont have a clicker. [laughter] right, thank you. And so im going to talk a lot if this is kind of a focus on the students perspective but i want to start by talking a little bit about inequality United States and britain are highly unequal societies unusually. So if you look at this graph this is just if you look at the horizontal access here this is telling you the relationship between basically what wealthy people earn and what poor the working class earn and in its society. So you can see the United States and britain are higher than almost all countries in terms of that, ine only surpassed by emerging economies and vertical access interracial mobility between what they earn and parents earned again a high level of inequality meaning that we have higher level of correlation between what we earn and what our parents earn compared to again oecd krnghtses. High levels low equality and mobility than kind of similar countries. This is also true by race. If you look at net worth with and another measure of inequality is actually wealth. Median wealth for whites in the United States is 13 times greater than median wealth for blacks in the United States and ten times great or for latinos in the United States. This is also true in britain. If you look at unemployment, job status, accommodation, hsdz we have inequality in britain as with so highly unequal societies so i came to this project wanting to know how elites make sense of their accomplishments in a highly unequality society and make sense of racial inequality in particular and so, you know, i thought this this would give us clues about how inequality gets perpetuated and social policies get passed that continue to maintain this inequality. And you know in particular when inequality is highlighted how do people as especially those who are the winners make sense of our ideology of equal opportunity . And i thought this qowld give us clues about kind of how we might think about shifting the way that we think and talk about race and class and achievement more accurately reflect our opportunities structure and the racial realities in our society. So i decided to look on elite University Campuses in particular because these are places where many elites come of age. Even if they wrnght elite before they entered these institutions. And so how students on the campuses would think about race and merit, matters a lot. No go on to make decisions about working in the media. Hiring decisions social policy decision and so theyll take with them their understanding of what a fair system is what equality opportunity means. How to select people on a fair way with them and as they go on to these positions in the future. And i also remembered my own experience on elite Residential College campus many years ago. I wont say how many. Where, you know, we talked a lot about race into the night with, you know, many of my fell students and i was living in britain at the time and noticing how this conversation about race was almost nonexistent on the College Campus the university of campuses that i was on. So i was curious about how this experience and residential Higher Education is operates differently in the United States and britain and how that shapes students perspectives differently the United States we have 58s many kind of rate and diversity related policies. We have for many decades department of aron americans studies. Affirmative action on most selective College Campuses. And some places have kind of rate base Student Centers in britain again none of those exists so how does this shape the way students think about these issues is the contact and question that i was really interested in. So how do Students National and University Contact so in the book i also talk about students at brown and harvard and how theyre different as well. And i was going to talk about that and today happy to talk about it in the q and a but ill focus on this take comparison. So so im so okay. So sorry. So how University Contact that is making and i focus in on admissions because this is a kind kind of highly contested do main in which people have a lot of opinions and a lot of thoughts right not just related to affirmative action but affirmative action is at that intersection of merit and race in particular. And we know that admission to these elite universities is unequal right so if you look at this this chart here we see that 15 of students on harvard and brown campuses that two sites of my research are black or latino compared to about a third of young adults in the United States. We also know that about a third of adults in the United States have a college bachelors degree compared to almost all 85 of students on the campus having parents with a college degree. So unequal both in terms of educational background as well as in many terms of race. This is also true in britain where about 7 of young adults are black or south asian, and im sorry 14 of young adults are black or south asian compared to about half of that on Oxford Campus. And the big kind of cleveland that people talk about this brooklyn is what kind of school is people go to and half of students on objection forward and cambridge campuses come from private schools compared to 7 of young people in britain. So unequal again in terms of unequality opportunity and related to race. So the puzzle then is how do students make sense of this inequality especially when theyre sort of hear this narrative of working hard in high school most of them working incredibly hard in high school most of them are going to schools in which pears peers are not getting get universities tol accomplishment and suggest that outcomes are highly unequal. So how so the last question that i address in this book is how what the complication are especially when had we think about a diversity practice and so what might we expect . How might we think that students would think about race admissions so on the one hand we might tick a symbolic politic approach and that theory in Political Science which says that our our ways that we think about policy punishes are related to kind of longstanding ways kind of political dispositions theyre emotional kind of so if you think of yourself as liberal youre going to support affirmative action. Youre going to support the welfare state kind of social welfare policies. And those are, are more likely those kind of identities are more likely to shape political views than say our own seflt interest and narrow individual seflt interest. So this qowld suggest that oops so we might think of emissions to a salient political issue people talk a lot about so so you know there are always articles in the United States in United States and britain about at the motion hads to those places related to affirmative action and otherwise as well so heres the story from the guardian in britain. Heres the story about the rankings always a big news item when rankings come out in the Washington Post always that student that gets into the Ivy League Colleges that always macs news from cnn. And bbc news about colleged a motion so this is something that is very much in the public do main and might expect people to be admission to these places so majority of students on elite campuses identifies liberal. And so we might expect a kind of liberal critique that would mean in the United States that we needs more class in rights diversity to argue with that what you see what you saw earlier and then in britain, you know much more classifying society we need more class diversity perhaps students might be thinking about race as well. More recently on the other hand there might be a much small minority of students is who have a conservative identity. And you know amy binder has a greats new book called becoming right but talks about conservative campus activists. And you know in the United States the conservative critique is we need to end affirmative action right make it class state. This is sort of argument that you hear in the United States. The british kind of admission society we talk about in a second is already kind of conservative but perhaps since my argue that you might t need to favor exam or interview in the admissions process. So thats the sort of symbolic politics approach. On the other hand, we might see a process of kind of what i call state of legitimate. That might reproduce admission that say say related to admissions which would legit mate winners of this contest theyve just gotten in and they have a interest in saying yeah that was fair because i worked really hard. And thats the kind of selfinterest story so it is if there is finish if this is whats beginning on the to say what their Admission Office is saying. And they might be different but they would say that admission is fair in National Context thats the right way to do admissions. And so these are sort of the different ways that we might think about how students would grapple with two issues of inequality and that that sort of contradiction. So okay let me tell you a little bit about this study. This is a kind of an interview based study i sent my graduate student out to interview on harvard grouped and Oxford Campuses we interviewed students across racial license and im going to talk just about white students is today happy to talk about this news much color in the q and a. And also spoke with dean of admissions, spoke with a lot of campus literature onis line, et cetera so just to get a sense of how the institutions thought about their work is really the citys question if. So i mention earlier are to focus in on u. S. U. K. Different comparison as well. So okay, so let me tell you a little bit about admissions before i get into findings so most of you are probably familiar with admissions to universities of the United States it is a very complex kind of system. With a lot of dircht kinds much information, the essay, exams, letter was recommendation, the s. A. T. , your pa and harvard dean of admission hadses about expansive view from something that he wrote in the New York Times again expansive view of excellence. Extracurricular distinction in personal qualities and diversity. And you to keep key phrases in mind when you hear as you hear from the students and what the students are talking about in terms of admission and britain admission is quite different. There are national and University Exams so you first take your National Exam and if you get kind of beyond a particular high cutoff score youre eligible is and then you can go and take some of the subjects that you might apply to have is a university exam. You have got to take that exam and if you qualify you come for a campus interview and unlike interviews in the United States youre u interviewed by academic in your teeld of study so professors who would then be teaching you so, obviously, they have an interest in admitting students who they feel like are, you know, quote unquote teachable which is which is part of the sources of admissions in the u. K. So the admissions side talks about academic abilities and aptitude for your subject and read a quote at objection forward he said to me for students who only need to be really good at mathematics for studying to apply for math at oxford doesnt matter with social skill or interest in humanity or whatever as long as theyre good mathematician so again you can hear a different way of thinking about what merit is in britain. So thats the context in which students are kind of thinking about admissions in these two places. So i want to start with some of my findings in the United States. Theres two pieces of parts to kind of how students thought about admissions in the United States. One is that they thought of admission as needing to be calibrated according to someones circumstances. So you know if youve been, you know, if you come from a poor family and you dont have a lot of Educational Opportunities and that needs to be taken into equity if youve come with with a lot of privilege and gone to like, you know, very elite high school that also needs to be taken into consideration in materials of looking at you. The whole picture. So these are kind of calibrated evaluation of individual merit according to life circumstances the seconds piece in a second is collective merit so stick with calibrated merit for a second and read you from a quote i call im mow she said if you have a hard life you did with a and bs but you have to work like 20 extra hours a week than another kid i think that speaks a lot more than if you got straight as because you have to provide for your family or help provide for them. Coining it should be taken into account. And so theres this idea of that that should shape so those people who are interested in inequality say thats a good thing to take this into account. Now related to calibration, the way that students thought about calibration was related to the ways that they thought about race. And the role that race plays in society. So if a chapter in the book i talk about students but call race frame how they think about the role that race place in americans in british society. And ill tell you about two of the race frames right now and how that shapes their views on calibration. So so the first way that students that it doesnt play apart from coincidence with class and about half of qhiet students in the United States had this perspective. Now, if you think that race doesnt play a role apart from its coincidence with class you think that calibration should be by social class so heres a student, a brown, call him alex he said i think they should consider social economic background and difficulties that people have. If youre from the same situation of background you face the same problems. Like if its a white kid with the same kind of upbrings with income level as a black kid i dont think it should have a advantage if we came from the same background. So again really saying that these are these are kind of separate kind of issues for class and race, and so on the other hand, a minority of students and this is predominantly student of color but a few white students had what i cull a power analysis frame. And this is a frame in which students saw the significance of rate as having a shaping kind of unequal power relationship in society related to race. And it really emphasizes the way that power oarptses through racial inequality. And so for these students, they understood the ways that racial inequality in particular affect it is minority views and they thought that tsh and that thing than race so for those they should happen by call brigs and by class. And so this is calibration was pretty common among most students. Now the second big part of admissions in the yoots was this kind of notion of what i call the collective american cohort and familiar to you if youve been a student in the United States that is that everybody has a hook and together we make a Diverse Group that leads to better learning, better Overall College experience right it is the way that diversity gets sold in the United States and so this was related to a lot of different kinds of diversity and a lot of different kinds of kind of pieces of merit. Right it could be, you know, youre a great musician. Youre an athlete. Actually youre a legacy even. And race is part of this as well. So heres a student talking about athletic and student says i used to think that having athletes quote un, quote, less qualified no longer view them as less qualified but qualified in a different way and i was really surprised to hear students talking about legacies in this way. Legacies meaning that if your parents went to the university you get kind of a leg up inned a hitions and i thought surely students would reject that so heres a student at harvard who said people who went to harvard had less likely to doobt to the university and continue if their children go to harvard. I think thats a reason to advantage them in admissions. So you know in harvard they have this kind of 30 billion 30 billion plus dollar endowment and idea that bringing in that money is a reason to kind of advantage those students. When they have a hook that gained a megs and incredibly competitive process being lack on latino becomes another form of diversity. And so heres the student who says Ethnic Diversity adds to the class as many as a class piano player and you can with hear this kind of problematic kind of race for black and latino students right and theres assumption that all black and latino students on campus are benefiting this this this consideration. Now, this kind of way of thinking about admissions coupled with what i call a diversity frame needs to support for affirmative action now the diversity trail is this, that that it is a cultural identity that shapes individuals world views, and cultural practices and positive ways. So race is positive thing that is something to celebrate a multicultural perpghtive and this was nearly universal this conversety frame i should say not exclues uv by hold a diversity frame as well as power analysis frame or, you know, less commonly power analysis and colorblindness. But this was very common among our white and students of color alike. So so should they consider race in admission the most common response of that is yes. And so that we can have a diverse student body which, in which we have a rich kind of educational experience so i didnt hear in response to that question as much of kind of yes because it affectss life chances yes because theres racial inequality. Now, both of these kind of pieces of the kind of admissions kind of perspective have down streamed consequences for race, and what are consequences of ways that students think about merit . But first one and the title of the book, the diversity bargain is that is students on this campus support affirmative action in what it benefits themeses and it benefits themselves through this kind of, you know, creating of this diverse environment. And so you know as long as it kind of contributes to their own kind of educational experience, their for it. But this has certain expectations that come looking with that view. And the first expectation is what i call integration comparative that is this, that students are expecting their black and latino peers in particular to integrate because that is, of course, what theyre there seeing as there for. So heres a student who is at harvard who says yes i think harvard is a diverse place. But i think that diversity ends up being a lot of different gliewps sort of selfselect and associate with their particular culture i dont know theres much interaction between groups is and then we asked anna to elaborate on her perspective she said it bothers me because it make it is it difficult to get to know people because im not in any of those and not join black Students Association and most of the groups im in are not i think race defined here. Because if they have a White Student Association they would get in a lot of trouble. I think its just sort of sad because interaction ive had with people from different backgrounds so great for them especially coming from a school where there wasnt a lot of that. So you can see a few things in annas words. One is that you know it is really about her own experience and you know what that is bringing to her own experience and i dont to be misunderstood that theres a lot of social Science Research that shows that there are incredible benefits to this to people views shift. They become less prejudice that shows benefits but i want to argue that focussings on that alone is problem mat egg for some of the reasons that i describe. I think the other thing to notice is that she focuses that black students arent coming to integrate with me i wont join black students integration so rather than her kind of making making that leap into the other direction. And theres again theres you know equation of a black Student Association with a White Student Association again lack of inequality and why we might have one on the historic white colleges. Okay and the seconds implication is what i call the reverse distribution script that is that students were really anxious about affirmative action leading to what they perceive as description if it went too far that sort of be a result. And so we ask is students about whether they had ever experienced Racial Discrimination felt they experienced Racial Discrimination. And the student says i hadnt gone into harvard i would have thought yad been discriminated against if someone else that i knew equally qualified and a minority if they gotten in over me. And so i call it a script because it is sort of this kind of script that is ready to deploy they got into harvard, hard you know with hard to you know, so theres no opportunity that has been fore saken yet this script narrative is out there. This worry, fear is out there. As a result because then it stops benefiting him. And the last part of this diversity bargain is kind of essentialize understanding of race et ethnicity and it means t if if black and latino students are here on campus to edify me, white student then nay need a particular kind of experience that is different to my own that i perceive to be different to my own in order to kind of enrich me. So heres a student i call karen who says tngt check a black box or latino box that should help to get them in. Maybe in their interview since latino done a lot of these things that make them add different to the cultural tab rick are and a people quarter mexican and got entire experience has been a white experience. She has a very specific idea of what it means to have a latino experience. And the student doesnt fit that so she feels that that student shouldnt kind of bent from this. And that theres an expectation again to contradict to the cultural fabric of the university. So this diversity bag began is ed in the way that students think about merit and race. And the last thing ill say and this is kind of her many kind of as preview to british case is that there were i got this sense of that a lot of students were evaluating their peers so looking at peers wondering what got you in about and what got you in. Were you i see youre youre a musician and theres a sort of again assumption about black and latino peers been, you know, less qualified. Right, lower test scores, et cetera. And so if you can imagine that kind of climate that that can create. Okay. So so overall students kind of really echoing in book you see i kind of do this comparison of the words that student say and what you see on the admission hads office is like literally just their website uncanny both kind of parallels and then you have these sort of consequences of the way that they think about this related to race. Iemg going to turn now to the british case had is much simpler. Standard simple criteria based on individuals oxnard has to maintain physician and a intellectual society an ultimately we should be blank spaces and all be admitted totally on merit. So again that phrase merit gets taken as a given. Heres a student who went to an underperforming high school and the student says i think it should be very much based on merit rather than on background. I personally if i knew that i had been positively discriminated that is british phrase for it affirmative action i think when i came here i would find is a lot more difficult to feel that i hadnt earn ored my place to be here. So ig these dirveght ways of thinking about admissions also has this unintended consequence of asktsing the ways that thy shouldnt be here. That this student felt and other students and other students as well in britain. And so in britain, students didnt really have didnt really talk about calibrates evaluation of merit like you get the highest score on math test an you study math. And nora was there with idea of collective merit which was american thing so heres the student who says came from a very elite boarding school he said you get toed ford as a result of your education no matter how naturally brilliant you are you have to be well educated and wealth, distribution in society means that white people have more access to best education even in the state sector. State schools are lower quality in my belief in areas of greater ethnic density so acknowledgement of unequal but that perception doesnt change the way that students think that admissions should happen. So fast kind of can k12 issue not a Higher Education issue or oxfords problem is some students tacked it be. So overall british students had very different understandings of merit compare to the United States student. Right that kind of very kind of blank slate approach and complex approach to the United States. But what they share in common is that in both of these National Context students is are really reproducing what Admission Office say to a t theyre really kind of almost regurgitating what theyve been saying as they go through admission process and land on campus and that gets kind of reproduced again. And the u. S. Students largely dont critique what universitieses do. And in britain there was a different diversity bargain they accept their pierce as intellectual equal so slightly different from the u. S. Where i heard mumbling like i wonder how that student got in, et cetera. But i didnt with hears much of that but kind of a acceptance of minority peers that the small member of minority peers on campus but also a kind of bargain that they sort of express in britain. And a this was an exchanges first and foremost no vision for equity in admissions outcomes and you heard that earlier when students say unequal opportunities but you know that is too bad. So one student said under preption is a problem but it is not oxfords problem another student says ive had friends who come here and frankly not been bright enough and have struggled and had a miserable time. I dont think thats fair. It is miss being at oxford if youre not good enough. Not a place where a tutor will spend extra time keeping you but ironic because they are public universities they have also a tutorial system where you have this oneonone and two on two system which one would think is a we are the way to sort of help students who havent had the same Educational Opportunities, and tutors arent prepared to take on responsibility of getting people up to scratch. Thats nots fair to anyone. And so this student so, you know, talks about this and makes clear that she thinks that it is not the universitys role to help those students who said the responsibility in my opinion lies with primary schools and secondary school thats where problem is not at this level. And so again, theres, you know, a recognition of and i quality but lack of regulation in addition of a role for university to play in that or addressing it when students arrive with different level of skill sets. And seconds piece of this diversity bargain is that theres a real denial of minority peers experiences and so i was still uncomfortable when i read you this quote like i should give a trigger warning when i read it. But this student says im slightly irritable when they cry wolf that is doing what they do best you know playing race card saying, is it because im black . That really annoys me because it is so unfonded in in england there were plenty of pretty severe racist incidents on Oxford Campus when i was doing this research so plenty of racism this england and on objection forward campus in particular but denying it. So untrue but you see it so much in other country when which we t have here but a denial that this is an issue in british societies. And she was not the only one to express this. I want to give you an example i dont know if it is made it to nyu but at harvard, there was a campaign by some students called we are all harvard which was about how black students felt excluded from the campus and they held these placard and kind of describe describing microaggression that they have experienced, and so oxford a few weeks later came out with i too am oxford and he said wow, so a quote quoting someone. He said wow your english so great she said thanks i was born in london hashtag unimpress sod this kind of took off, and interestingly Institution Responses were quite drircht in two National Context but what happened a few days later surprised me even more which was we have this. We are all oxford as a response this is a group of students who wanted to counter that message. And you can see her you cant see it says we enjoy celebrating diversity at the Oxford University Student International fair. So again that kind of denial that of the experience of the young woman right before in her kind of critique of the university. So theres a chapter where talk about this culture of racial joke and how they talk about racial joke which was aired then and really part of a kind of elite private School Culture that came to the campus as well. And again a denial of minority experiences. So overall you know, theres a kind of story of status and both of the different National Context so different way of thinking about race and merit and similar and students expressing merit that legit mate their own success they reproduce this language of administrators and in doing so embracing process they know to have results in this which this group and are systemically underrepresented. Students assume that their definition is the best of the best. The most fair ones, the one that brings most deserving students to campus and unspoken followon is there are students who dont get in are undeserving orless deserving. And interestingly you know i kind of started this thinking that well, if we have all a of the public scrogs that maybe thats going to kind of put a crack in in the students beliefs in these systems of merit, but, in fact, it might kind of exasperate belief but when your status is into question you might cling to it a little more and this is what mary talked about. She talked about how, you know, may actually be this desire to have a status may be exasperated when it gets called into question and a public discussion of inequality and overall you know these these universities and it is not just top universities that most selective universities are getting increasingly selective right so every year you know that im sure nyu does this every year im sure a campus, newspaper article lowest admin rate ever supposed to be a signal that our quality is broffing that our status is rising, rights this is something to celebrate. Theres this belief that you know becoming more and more exclusive excuse me is a good thing and that fuel this is belief in merit and leads to ultra. So we know, however, that Research Shows that when systems become more and more exclusive it leads to greater inequality in terms of the outcome and more reliance on s. A. T. Scores that we know are have racially biased kind of outcomes. And then needing to compensate even more with prop, you know, programs leak affirmative action which are on shaky legal ground. And i also i want to point out universities play a role, their status is also at stake again because the university is trying to climb those, that is it the is us hierarchy of, you know, the u. S. News and world record kind of ranking right, so theres this kind of policy feedback booth where they think about there are kind of talking about admissions in particular ways. And students kind of repeat that will and then they will go on and take those beliefs and ways that they think about race and merit and equity, opportunity into, you know, the jobs that world, labor market when they leave these universities. And i think its important for universities to really think about projection of views and what that does and how that perpetuates place a role in equality and providing little vision for reducing inequality with especially racial inequality. So you know, it might be that selfinterest kind of dominates over symbolic politics remember that beginning i talked about these two different juxtapose politics view with a a selfinterest perspective and it might be that when it is at stake ore significant investment that selfinterest kind of dominates and this desire to kind of to protect that, that kind of legitimate and status and when these students are working incredibly hard theyre getting in. They feel this real sense of accomplishment i can understand that. But it sort of perhaps then leads them to do these views. So overall i really see this this work is aloom naitding how systems of reward are not just about the reward they meet out but important consider knock on effect of the way that we do these things. They also shape and they also reflect as they reflect individuals meaning making another do main so talks about how they affect relation in campus and many the book more about race relation i talked about culture of britain and university about ways that students interact or kind of have this fear of being perceived as racist how that is tied to these views in the United States as well. So im going to stop here and ill look forward to why were comments and questions. Thank you. [applause] thank you again natasha for your wonderful talk and gracing our department of managing right now if you have any, one great question. Im going to be the mic person. Thank you. I had a question in regards to the british students that had a denial of there being a problem of racism in their sthiewtion. Do you think theyre sub conscienceness doing comparison to oppression in the history of racism in the u. S. And other places and maybe cub subconsciously thinking maybe not as racist because we dont have that history . So echo is hard for me did you say they dont have that in britain . Repeat that question im sorry. Echo is hard to sorry so im asking if british students are doing a comparison so institution pral and racism in britain comparativety to the u. S. Because they dont have that history maybe of like necessity to establish like an hbcu because up in the 60s most of the institutions didnt accept black people. So do you think that maybe theyre thinking to themselves well we dont have that same problem here. So we dont have it is not overtly racist in britain potential yeah. Absolutely. I mean, u. S. Moves large in britain as it does in many countries and about theres definitely this idea that the u. S. Is a race Oriented Society but we dont have race here. We have class. But until reality is that theres plenty of racial inequality in britain and plane of the class equality in the United States and we know theres a data that shows that. But theres a lack of kind of narrative about racial inequality thats slowly changing in the last few years. Has been a little bit more talk. Theres a report i remember when i was this in early years of this research i found that this table on oxford admission website showed that admission statistics by race, and for black British Black there was i think there was one student who got in. This one year i thought that i assumed it was a typo and then two years later this counselor came out and a government member of parliament and he basically like blasted he wrote oped said there are colleges so the College System where no black student has been admitted in five years so theres plenty of exclusion in britain its just not in public l do main and people dont think about their society as a the kind of racialized society. And you know, i think of the United States we at least pay it a little bit of attention you know, i argue in the book we can do a lot more. But we have the history of the civil right the movement which really sort of, you know, and desegregation and race up front and center in the United States in a way i think was a helpful start. Ic we have a long way to go but ting that is different in the u. K. For sure. The u. K. They think of thelses as post clone yum society in some sense, and but even that is very muted, you know, britain kind of sees itself as a sort of benevolent post, you know, that there was a sort of benevolent colonizer so yeah. Thanks. I did try to look systematical systematically. It was especially related to this idea of collective merit a. Of affirmative action is one of those as well. So a student that talks about being a conservative politician, i realized diversity is such a good thing and now i am in favor of affirmative action. It is a major discipline, yes. [inaudible] sociology i have a little bit of a bias. I didnt feel competent enough to say this but there was a student that says it is basically a history of the 20th century in the United States and talk about how they learned about and understood racial inequality and the production of racial inequality in the way they did and before that. So, because i did and im hesitant to make any claims but certainly they were there. Its hard to know which way it goes but the story that i tell him my vote is they come to college with their dispositions in terms of how they tend to see the world. They get disrupted to come to a new place and age to change the way they think about the world. They are taking that sociology 101. But i do think those students then gain a language they didnt have before to make sense of their ways of thinking about the world. The other piece of the story is the kind of Orientation Programs called the Third World Transition Program that is an Orientation Program where about half the students of color attend, and it is a very kind of political experience where the workshops in the program are like racism, sexism, colonialism, and they talk about that as a very transformative experience. It sounded like a good thing i wanted to come to campus early. I think that is kind of an unusual program, but it does suggest that being on campus kind of shapes the way they think about race and the kind of cover and. View of race for the students in color to attend so that is another way that the university took the classes to shake the perspective. The admissions process by college has its own admissions process. I wanted to invite you to say more about your students of color and im really curious to know how things were different for them. I didnt talk about that because i didnt want to complicate it, but oxford is comprised of the students applied to a particular college and if i am clear on how they make those decisions, there are colleges that are known for being elite, and theres others that are known for admitting the working class students and others that are kind of the middleoftheroad. So i interviewed students at two particular colleges. They are the middleoftheroad and there are tables that show the achievement levels in the middle 50 . It isnt clear how much power he has. It seems like over time its becoming a little more centralized and fierce trading going on and s this with the coe rejects a student they get back into the pool of th the student says i will go to any college and theres another College Looking for more students. I dont know ho how but call t probably has to do with how many they have for the particular majors, it is a. So thats the kind of college but it didnt seem to affect the story. They talk about the college being different in terms of the yard doing. They have a different perspective, so in the u. S. As you might imagine, they dont buy into this diversity bargain and they shouldnt. They are there to get an education just like everybody else. And if they did appreciate diversity and if they had a different understanding of the racial diversity. So the students at the program, for example, talked about coming there to develop the cross racial relationships coming from different backgrounds and perspectives and. All of them are friends with each other before we even get here. So they sold them as more of a group of color and the white students, so and a different way of thinking of the racial diversity. They were more likely to have a perspective that it wasnt the minority view of the black and latino students either. It was about half. I dont think any of them expressed a colorblindness perspective, and so they also talked about this kind of tension and i talk about this in my talk, this sort of anxiety that exists being called racist or beginquotes seen as racist iof a different color bringing with them very racialized experience. It seems to buy into the culture of the University Much more. I adhere because they worked hard and a few of them have almost a culture of poverty perspective and immigrants and their children. It made me think perhaps to make it to oxford a person of color in britain or secondgeneration maybe you would have to embody the identity as a sort of elite. You are no fun, theres no way fothere is no wayfor you to ent. Now i should say that historically and even today there are some more radical students on the campus. I didnt go out and see them, and i think that they are very small in number and i heard about this group, kind of radical students of color. The power in alices frame doesnt have access to it in the same way and it might be if you have for this position youre not going to come to oxford because it is a place there are few minorities that have this culture and they talked about that. They went to a college in london because they would be happier there. That reproduces the way of shifting it when you dont adapt that since they had a better experience. I wanted to go back to the beginning of the talk where you talk about them emerging from these elite universities and feedback. I wonder how you chose a place that had both high quality and low social mobility. Do you expect this if he were to go to other spots on the distribution for the marriage and diversity . We know if we kind of look at the continent we have a very Higher Education system like the elites and then theres the state schools and community colleges. In Continental Europe it is a lot flatter. People are more likely to go to the university in their town. Town. Thertheres less variation, so e isnt this thing in the same way that we have it in the United States and britain, and that coincidence i dont think that its a coincidence that its because they are structured unequally to place people in the stratified system. Do you think people are paid according to the merits of measure and they are most likely to say yes and then theres a question do you think there is a good thing and americans are also more likely to say yes but we should be paid according to how good we are at something in our qualifications, what have you said there is a stronger belief in the meritocracy in the United States cant again, that is a coincidence everybody wants to be at the top then i can do what i want to do and there isnt this sort of scrambling in the same way. We know that leads to unequal outcomes in the system. Do you think that it was a self the u. S. News and world report it wouldve colleges especially in the top 100 use them to benchmark against each other for emissions and the amount of donors that contribute to let themselves go higher on the list, do you think of what the return on investment will be after they lend themselves to how the inequality persists because the students are not looking to become whole individuals or Something Like that or citizens are looking to see what their salary is going to be and not th what type of person they become when they graduate. One is about the ring games and what that does. There is a great new book in this question where they talk about the impact the rankings have and what the administrators are doing in response to try to kind of increased the status and the ranking and this is a sort of new where the universities compare themselves they are always looking up and say they are the ones that are just above them. It is a big thing now for the college is right below because they are trying to get the top students and to increase the rankings it increases your gpa so there are damaging affects the colleges are responding to that fostered the equality. These universities are exceptional universities and i chose them because i thought thesthese were the places that students wouldnt have the same anxiety like if it were a different system i would have gotten into harvard or cambrid cambridge. So i chose them delivered to flee because of that. In other research ive got a harvartheharvard degree i can mn but it doesnt matter. I feel like Higher Education is changing dramatically. Well we had a credentialing system, i dont know what the next thing is going to be. I dont know that i can speak to that given this research, but it is an important question. You illustrated this incredible tension that the students talked about in terms of the diversity. So first, it has to be something that has a demand for integration. We are diverse but we must interact otherwise at the same time you cannot be too much like the mainstream. If you are too much the mainstream, then youre not actually favor. It makes me think of the literature on the diversity how the suburbs will be into this diversity and what they mean on black and latino. So i was wondering in the interviews, how did students reconcile or did they reconcile the diversity meaning that paradoxical elements. I think it doesnt come up because the students of color get certified in the university because theyve gotten into harvard and brown. They never felt like all of my peers are legit. They are already acceptable because they assume they have academic backgrounds talented in their own ways. The answer to that might be different in different kinds of places where affirmativeaction plays a different role but i didnt hear that attention because ive got selection that already happened before they even get. Where the students of color was better perform the difference in the nominated space knowing that theres too much just like everyone else. The students of color talk and this isnt just in my research but others show they feel they can let their guard down. It is not the kind of dominating experience in the university, so there is a contract between the integrated spaces feeling like they can sort of relaxed. It came from a background or whe they were adopted or whatever it is, so i think it is complex. Two quick questions. You mentioned you had graduate student interviews so im wondering about how you think those that are doing the interviewing and the participants. In terms of the different universities and the structure of the extracurricular experience and the American College experienced is definitely a bigger focus on the things that happened outside of class so im just curious if there is any difference how the universitys structure the experience of what people are talking about when they answer the questions. I will say a little bit about the method. I like to do my interviews myself. For this project i felt like i couldnt get honest and open responses and make them feel completely comfortable with me, so i decided that i was going to hire Doctoral Students to do the interviews. Because of that, again, i thought having done these interviews and developing and not meeting these students i thought that i should hire a student of color to interview so there was one student of color on the campus and one white students who did all the interviews in the United States. In britain it was a little more tricky because when i lived there for six years i could tell someones accent like where they came from. I happened to get around the fact that so i talked to a colleague at oxford and he recommended a doctoral student who happened to be from western europe. I was a little nervous about that and it worked out well because she signaled the students from western europe and there were no class markers in her voice because she had the accent. I think in the end i felt like it would have mattered less because she did all the interviews in britain. Students said things i wouldnt expect them to say. It felt like it did not affect those interviews in the end but i was a little more nervous about that. So in terms of extracurriculars and diversity i talk about this in the book there is an institutionalization on the campuses. Britain has very little of that. They have the minority students groups, but that is the extent of it in terms of the areas they have like south Asian Studies about south asia are africans its about africa but not like Asian American studies or british studies or anything like that. Harvard and brown the differences are they institutionalizing different ways. For example, when i did this research, it was called the third world center. We just changed the name. You can hear a signaling that the third world identity comes out as kind of political. When the center for diversity was called the foundation for the true Cultural Affairs is focused on the integration. Theres other ways thethere is a Transitional Program in particular orientation. They call it a community conversation. They dont have the same impact on students, so i think what that does is they develop a much more robust understanding that they didnt learn that should bd have learned in school in a language to make meaning of the experiences that theyve had but they are very alienated from that because most of them are not participating and we dont get why are they all hanging out in the third world country we dont understand that, and harvard their big event there was a multicultural performance event where the students talked about that like it had a great experience of diversity and then at the end they all got together so it was positive and if they appreciated it but it lacks the vision for how to address the racial inequality so there are pluses and negatives and i would argue that we need to find a way to institutionalize the model that brings all of the students into this kind of understanding and complexity. [applause] [inaudible conversations] reports on alternatives to traditional banking in her