The Origins of Affirmative Action

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-66
Author(s):  
Matthew Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
Workplace Justice ◽  
Federal Contracts ◽  
The University

This chapter examines the origins of affirmative action in the University of Michigan (UM). The pressure that led to the university's first undergraduate affirmative action admissions program came from a federal bureaucrat and the president of the United States, who were both responding to black activism for workplace justice. Yet this pressure never threatened UM with the loss of lucrative federal contracts or potential court cases. UM adopted affirmative action in 1964 because people at the top of the institution wanted the university to change. This environment of weak federal coercion created a perfect recipe for co-optation. After the initial dose of federal pressure, UM officials took control of the purpose and character of affirmative action, creating a program that preserved the university's long-established priorities and values. It is no surprise, then, that between 1964 and 1967, black enrollment rose from only 0.5 to 1.65 percent of the student body. However, given that African Americans constituted more than 10 percent of the state population, affirmative action made a small dent in the racial disparities at UM.

Sustaining Racial Retrenchment

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-187
Author(s):  
Matthew Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Black Students ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Student Body ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The University ◽  
Corporate Model

This chapter describes how the University of Michigan (UM) leaders fought to preserve the new affirmative action policies. In this context, diversity—the idea that a racially heterogeneous student body improved education and prepared students for a multiracial democracy and global economy—became a tool to defend and sustain the new policies. Diversity helped sever the purpose of affirmative action from addressing the inequality rooted in cities, offered ambiguous goals that helped officials avoid accountability, and advanced administrators' interests in introducing a corporate model for the university. The diversity ideal, in other words, did not spark racial retrenchment. Instead, diversity became a tool to sustain the university's policies of retrenchment. Administrators still had to work to retain control over the meaning of diversity and ensure it supported the new policies. When diversity took hold among administrators, black students and their allies tried to employ diversity language to undermine the policies of retrenchment. Administrators ensured that never happened.

Book Reviews

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 1594-1596
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Foreign Exchange Intervention ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
The University ◽  
Economics And Politics

Kathryn M. E. Dominguez of the University of Michigan reviews “Currency Conflict and Trade Policy: A New Strategy for the United States,” by C. Fred Bergsten and Joseph E. Gagnon. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes the economics and politics of currency manipulation, globally and with respect to the key individual countries that engage in repeated intervention or feel its effects, and demonstrates empirically the strong connection between official foreign-exchange intervention and trade imbalances.”

Affirmative Action for the Future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Sterba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Affirmative Action Program ◽  
Educational Context ◽  
Action Program ◽  
University Of Texas ◽  
The Future ◽  
The University

Diversity instead of race-based affirmative action developed in the United States from the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision in 1978 to the present. There have been both objections to this form of affirmative action and defenses of it. Fisher v. University of Texas could decide the future of all race-based affirmative action in the United States. Yet however the Fisher case is decided, there is a form of non-race-based affirmative action that all could find to be morally preferable for the future. A diversity affirmative action program could be designed to look for students who either have experienced racial discrimination themselves or who understand well, in some other way, how racism harms people in the United States, and thus are able to authoritatively and effectively speak about it in an educational context.

Talking Tenure

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarita Echavez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Faculty Of Color ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Asian Pacific American ◽  
Asian Pacific ◽  
The University

Written in the wake of her tenure case at the University of Michigan, Sarita See's essay reflects the various subject positions she has held in the academy from untenured, and therefore vulnerable, assistant professor to a powerful advocate and organizer calling for institutions to closely interrogate what is at stake when faculty of color face tenure battles. Reflecting the challenges of writing about the unwritten record of racism and sexism in the United States academy, this essay documents and juxtaposes two radio segments with the radio collective "Asian Pacific American (APA): A Compass"—a rant and an interview—that See did as part of two national tenure justice campaigns on behalf of women of color academics that she helped organize.

The Linguistic Society of America and North American Linguistics, 1950–1968

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archibald A. Hill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The University ◽  
Annual Summer

Summary The author, Secretary-Treasurer of the Linguistic Society of America during the crucial phase of the post-World War II growth of linguistics as an autonomous academic speciality, 1950–1968, reports on the events that shaped the LSA and the discipline in North America in general. Whereas the Society counted only 829 members, individual and institutional, in 1950, the total number had risen to 4,375 by 1968. The author narrates, in a year-by-year manner, the acitivities that held the Society together during this period and furthered the exchange of ideas among the different generations of linguists, namely, (1) the annual meetings, traditionally held at the end of December, at which both established scholars and fledgling researchers presented papers and had them discussed; (2) the annual summer institutes, first held for a number of years in a row at the University of Michigan and subsequently at several other campuses in the United States, and (3) the publication of Language, the Society’s organ, ably edited by Bernard Bloch from 1941 until his death in 1965.

A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of New Persistent Opioid Use After Surgery v1

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Howard ◽  
Craig Brown ◽  
Vidhya Gunaseelan ◽  
Michael Englesbe ◽  
Jennifer Waljee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Retrospective Study ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Opioid Use ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Opioid Prescribing ◽  
The University

The Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network (OPEN) at the University of Michigan was established in 2016 with the goal of reducing excessive opioid prescribing after surgery using evidence-based prescribing guidelines. Beginning in July 2016, OPEN began a statewide quality improvement campaign to educate providers and share prescribing best practices. In October 2017, the first prescribing guidelines were released. Although these efforts have been associated with significant decreases in postoperative opioid prescribing, it is unknown whether the incidence of new persistent opioid use after surgery has changed as well. This retrospective study examines the effect of these efforts on new persistent opioid use after surgery compared to the rest of the United States - including other states where no such program existed - using a difference-in-differences approach.

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