Research
Click link for my curriculum
vitae
Summary of Research Interests: My scholarship seeks to better understand the puzzles of the resilience and transformations of "affirmative action" in the Post-Civil Rights era. By focusing particularly on the habitat of race-conscious admissions policies in elite public universities, I shed light on the powerful role the organizational actors (admissions officials and other diversity professionals) play in developing, mediating, diffusing, defending, and transforming racial inclusion policies. Scholarship on affirmative action tends to focus on conventional political actors and actions (e.g. judicial decisions, executive orders, bureaucratic policies, legislation, ballot measures, and interest group mobilization). However, few scholars venture into the organizations (e.g. universities, corporations, government agencies) to learn how the professionals operate within the "legal environments" of particular organizations. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 40 officials at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I seek to show how and why racial inclusion policies have been vigorously defended and transformed by top administrators, admissions and financial aid directors, diversity professionals, and other involved faculty members. Below you will find titles and abstracts of my recent manuscripts. My scholarship is connected by a focus on the development of racial inclusion policymaking and politics and the central role of organizational professionals in steering the policy developments within a larger context of American political development.
Recent Publications: Click the following link for titles and abstracts of a selection of recent publications and works-in-progress.
Future Research Project: For my next research project, I plan to investigate the 2003 litigation (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger regarding "affirmative action" in law and undergraduate admissions the University of Michigan) and 2006 ballot measure (Proposal 2) that placed Michigan in the eye of the storm over "affirmative action" in the beginning of the 21st century. Through interviews with political entrepreneurs on both sides of the Proposal 2 battle, I seek to better understand why One United Michigan (the pro-"affirmative action" coalition that sought unsuccessfully to mobilize against Proposal 2) pursued the related strategies of ducking race by both focusing on gender-based affirmative action and courting women voters. I also wish to learn the strategic factors that contributed to the Michigan Civil Rights Institute (the organization behind the "Yes on Proposal 2" campaign) winning in a landslide despite being underspent, despite the absence of a major coalition, and despite statewide visibility on the airwaves.
In my research on the University of Michigan, I seek to understand how and why a cast of university officials at the University of Michigan came to care so passionately about "affirmative action", how they mobilized to defend race-conscious admissions before the U.S. Supreme Court, and how they have adjusted their admissions and related racial inclusion policies now that Proposal 2 has amended the state Constitution to ban the racial preferences in public universities.
