Explain It to Me

Affirmative action could be doomed (again). What comes next?

Listen Later

Dylan Matthews, Dara Lind, and Jerusalem Demsas talk about affirmative action. They dig into the current Supreme Court case about Harvard’s admission rates and ask: How do we make sure our elite institutions adequately reflect the population? Plus, a white paper about the effects of education on mortality.


References:


  • Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser’s explainer about the SCOTUS cases
  • Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler, and Tyler Ransom's empirical papers on Harvard admissions
  • Jay Caspian Kang on the Harvard case
  • Ending affirmative action in California pushed Black and Latinx students into worse schools and jobs
  • Randall Kennedy’s case for affirmative action
  • Sheryll Cashin’s case for “place-based affirmative action”
  • An argument that class-based affirmative action produces more racial diversity than regular affirmative action
  • Nicholas Lemann on affirmative action for the New Yorker
  • How the Texas “10 percent” rule changed high school enrollment
  • White paper: "The Effects of Education on Mortality: Evidence Using College Expansions"
  • “A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost,’” the Wall Street Journal
  • Opinion | “Affirmative Action Was Never a Perfect Solution,” the New York Times 
  • “Estimating Benefits from University-Level Diversity” 



    • Hosts:

    Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), senior correspondent, Vox

    Jerusalem Demsas (@jerusalemdemsas), policy reporter, Vox

    Dara Lind (@dlind), Weeds cohost, Vox



    Credits:

    Sofi LaLonde, producer and engineer

    Libby Nelson, editorial adviser

    Amber Hall, deputy editorial director of talk podcasts


    Sign up for The Weeds newsletter each Friday: vox.com/weedsletter 


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