Leveraging Our Legal and Educational Systems to Expand Opportunity for Students of Color

Continuing New America’s Affirmative Action Listening Tour Talk Series, the Higher Education team chatted with “recovering lawyer” (how she refers to herself sometimes) and academic researcher Dr. Liliana Garces. After practicing law for five years, Dr. Garces pivoted to a career in academia, examining laws and policies that have hindered postsecondary access and pathways for underrepresented and marginalized communities. Her long list of research pulls from various frameworks in socio-legal studies, sociology, education, law, and political science. Her work can be accessed in numerous research and law journals like Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, American Journal of Education, and Journal of Higher Education.

Dr. Garces starts our conversation by discussing the political landscape of the Supreme Court cases involving higher education. She does not shy away from telling us how the plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), have built their argument by exploiting and spurring harmful stereotypes of Asian American students. She also mentions how SFFA has utilized the court’s new profound conservative majority to attack equal opportunity.

Further into the interview, Dr. Garces talks about how state affirmative action bans, mainly implemented in California and Michigan, have caused a decline in postsecondary enrollment by Black and Latinx students at highly-selective and selective colleges and universities. She explains that the consequences these states have and continue to experience are strong evidence of why this country should never pursue a federal affirmative action ban. When thinking of ways to expand educational opportunities, it would be inconsiderate of policymakers to ignore the decline of enrollment of students of color across the STEM, social sciences, and legal fields.

Finally, we end the conversation by asking Dr. Garces, “What can the White House and Congress do to maintain and improve access for students of color?” She leaves viewers with two answers to this question. She reminds us how federal policymakers can leverage our legal and educational systems to work together to expand postsecondary pathways and improve educational outcomes for students of color, especially when educational opportunity is under attack. She also calls on federal policymakers not to be fearful of having critical conversations about race and racism. These conversations must happen if we want to eradicate inequality and improve access to education and other basic needs.

Here are some additional highlights from our Listening Tour Talk with Dr. Garces:

• “Diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and policies are supposed to help institutions provide high-quality education for all students, opening doors of opportunity and supporting educational experiences in a way that promotes the institution's mission. Considering race as a factor in admissions has been central to achieving the mission of higher education institutions.”

• “There's a lot of concern about the decision. We need to remember that prior decisions have restricted the work of racial equity. They have had to happen with this narrowing opening of diversity. It's an area that has left us less fluent in how we talk about race and racial inequities.”

• “We see that these bans on affirmative action in states like Michigan, California, and others have led to substantial declines in the enrollment of minoritized communities across a number of educational sectors, in selective undergraduate schools and graduate fields of study. There have been cuts across fields like engineering, the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and also at schools of medicine, which are training future doctors who will need to be equipped to serve a multiracial democracy in our society.”

To learn more, check out the entire conversation here.

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