that to be a jew is not comfortable state. they knew that it is not even a state. to be a jew, i'm not a jew, rabbi, but you are not a jew, 65 days of the year and those moments of your day. there is a moment where you're more jew than other. to be a jew is not a brace that is fall on your head and what you just have to entertain, sort of spiritual capital. it's much more than that. there is to name for the last time, his most famous book which is the best introduction to his work is called difficult -- [inaudible] he could have called it difficult judaism.

[applause] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> [inaudible conversations] >> welcome, everybody. local to our third colloquium series of the year. i'm very great delighted to introduce natasha warikoo who is an associate professor at harvard university graduate school of education. she is an expert on relationships between education, racial and ethnic diversity of the cultural processes in schools and universities.

our first book titled balancing act analyzes youth culture among children of immigrants attending low performing high schools in new york city and competitively with london. i won't go into details of the second book which is a topic of our exciting talk today. in addition to her books, the th also has many, many, many, many papers are published in prestigious journals including the american journal of education, the british educational research journal, ethnic and racial studies, "l.a. times" and the "washington post." as an aside and for those evil in questions of a concert if i've long assigned one of her pieces for classes which is a beautiful review of the explanation of educational inequalities. she also has a numerous number of grants and awards from the association, british academy, national science foundation, russell stage foundation. natasha received her phd from harvard and bachelors in science and arts in math and philosophy

from brown university. so join me and warmly welcoming dr. warikoo. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for the nice introduction. it's really a delight to be here. i can see that many of the ideas in this book when i was on leave at russell stage foundation in new york a few years ago so it's nice to be back. having actually written the book and having it tell a coherent story, which wasn't quite there yet a few years ago. so this book is about, is there an echo in the room? okay. this book is about how students in your elite universities make sense of brace care, meritocracy and he called in the estates and britain. it's really sort of quality look at -- i realize i have no way -- i don't have a clicker. thank you and some going to talk a lot, this is kind of a focus on students perspective. i want to start by talking a little bit about inequality.

united states and britain are highly unequal societies, and unusually unequal societies. if you look at this graph. if you look at horizontal access here, this is telling you the relationship between basically what wealthy people are and what the working class earns in a a society. you can see the united states and britain are high that almost all oecd countries in terms of that inequality. only surpassed by emerging economies. on the vertical axis is intergenerational mobility, the relationship between what someone earns what the parents aren't. i can't i high level of inequality meaning that with higher levels of correlation between what we earn and what our parents earned compared to get other oecd countries. so high levels of inequality, lower levels of intergenerational mobility and kind of similar countries. this is also true i race. look at net worth, another measure of inequality is actual

wealth. median wealth for whites in the united states is 13 times greater than beating wealth from blacks in the united states and ten times greater than median wealth for latinos in the united states. this is also true and britain. if you look at and a plenum, job status, accommodation, homicide, racial inequality and britain. these are highly unequal societies and they came to this project wanting to know how elites make sense of their competence and highly unequal society. and how to make sense of racial inequality in particular? i thought this would give us clues about how inequality gets perpetuated, how does social policies get past that continue to maintain this inequality. in particular, when inequality when it's highlighted and women know that the high rates of inequality how did people, especially those were the winners, make sense of our

ideology of equal opportunity? i thought this would give us clues about how we might think about shifting the way we think and talk about race and class and achievements more accurately reflect our opportunity structure and the racial realities in our society. i decided to look on elite university campuses in particular because these are places where many elites, page. even if they were not elite before they entered these institutions. how students on these campuses think about race and merit matters a lot. they will go on to make decisions about working in the media, hiring decisions, social policy decisions. they will take with them their understandings of what a fair system is, what equal opportunity means, how to select people in a fair way with them as they go on to these positions in the future. i also remembered i own experience on a residential college caps when years ago, i

won't say how many, where we talked a lot about race into the night with many of my fellow 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 campus that i was on. i was curious about how this experience in residential higher education operates different in the united states and britain and other shapes students perspective civil. in the united states we also have many kind of race-based policies and diversity related policies. for many decades department of african-american studies, affirmative action on most selective college campuses, and some places have kind of race-based student centered and in britain and is essentially exist. so how distance national and also university context shape that meaning?

in the book i also talk about students at brown and harvard and other different as well, going to talk about that comparison. i'm really going to focus on this kind of u.s.-uk comparison so okay, so, sorry. so how university context shapes that meaning, i focus in on admission because this is a highly contested domain in which people have a lot of opinions and a lot of thoughts. not just related to affirmative action but affirmative action is a big part of that story and that's at the intersection of merit and race in particular. and we know that admissions to these elite universities is unequal. if you look at this chart, we see about 15% of students on the harvard and brown campuses, the two sides of my research, are

black or latino, compared to about a third of young adults in the united states. we also know about a third of adults in the united states have a bachelors degree, compared to almost 85% of students on these campuses having parents with a college degree. so unequal both in terms of educational background as well as in terms of race. this is also true in britain where about 7% of young adults are black or south asian. on second 14% are black or south asian compared to about half of that on the oxford campus. the big cleavage of inequality people talk about in britain is what kind of school people go to. about half the students on the oxford and cambridge campuses come from private schools compared to 7% of young people in britain. so unequal again in terms of educational opportunities and related to race. and so the puzzle that is how do

students make sense of this inequality and especially when they are sort of, to hear this narrative of working hard in high school most of them were concurrently hard in high school. those of them are going to school to which most of the peers are not getting into universities is easy to feel a real sense of accomplishment on the one hand. on the other hand, we know this data that suggests the outcomes are pretty highly unequal. so, and the last question i address in this book is what the implications are of that, especially think of this diversity related to policy practice. so what might we expect, how might we think states with think about race and admissions? so when the one hand we might take a symbolic politics approach. it's a theory in political science which says that the ways we think about policy issues are related to kind of long-standing ways, kind of political dispositions, emotional kind of

come if you think of yourself as a liberal you going to support affirmative action. you're going to support the welfare state, kind of social welfare policies. and those are more likely, those kind of identities are more likely to shape our political views than our own self-interest, are narrow individual self-interest so this would suggest that -- we might think of admissions to elite universities as a particularly salient kind of political issue, something people think and talk a lot about. there are always articles in newspaper both united states and written about admission sees places. so here's a story from the guardian in britain. as a story about the rankings that those big news item when the rankings come out every year in the "washington post." there's always that student who

gets into all eight ivy league colleges that always makes the news. and bbc news about college admissions. this is something that is very much in the public domain and we might expect people to have their strong views about admission to these places. the majority of students on elite campuses like this identify as liberal, as we might expect a liberal critique. this would mean in the united states that we need more diversity. it's hard to argue with that. and in britain much more classifying society can we need more class diversity. students but be thinking about race as one more recently. on the other hand, there might be a small minor distance of a conservative identity. amy binder has a great new book called becoming right but talks about conservative campus activists. in the united states a conservative critique is we need to end affirmative action. make it class based.

this is a argument you here in the united states. perhaps students might argue that you need to favor the exam or the interview in the admissions process. so that's the symbolic politics approach. on the other hand, we might see a process of what i call state of legitimization. that is, students might reproduce the language that admission office essays led to admissions which would legitimize their status as winners. they are just gotten in. they've an interest in saying that was there because i worked really hard. that's why kenneth self interest story. if this is what's going on, we'd expect students to basically say what their admissions offices say. and they might be different but they would say that the admissions is there international context and that's the right way to do admissions.

and so does a sort of the different ways we might think about how students would grapple with these two issues of inequality and meritocracy, and that sort of contradiction. let me tell you about this study. this is an interview-based study. i sent my graduate students how to interview students on the harvard, brown and oxford campuses. we interviewed students across racial lines. i'm going to talk just about the white students today. i'm happy to talk about students of color in the q&a, and also spoke with some deans of admission, spoke to a lot of campus literature online, et cetera. so just to get a sense about institutions thought about the work really to these questions. and i mentioned earlier i will focus in on the u.s. and uk difference, comparison as well. so let me tell you a little bit about admission before yo get io

some of these findings. most of your problems through with admissions to universities in the united states. it's a very complex kind of system. with a lot of different kinds of information, the essay exams, letters of recommendation, the sat, your gpa, and the harvard dean of admissions talks about an expansive view, this this is all from something he wrote in the "new york times." an expansive view of excellence, extracurricular distinction and personal qualities, and diversity. i want you to keep those key phrases in might as ago, and when you here, as you hear from students and what the students are talking about in terms of admissions. in britain, admissions is quite different. there are national and university exams. first you take your national exams and if you get beyond a pretty high cutoff score you are eligible and you can go and take

some of the subjects you might apply to have a university exam, take that and if you qualify then you will come for a campus interview. unlike interviews and the united states you will be interviewed by academics in your field of study studies of the professors who would then be teaching you. they have an interest in admitting students who they feel are quote-unquote teachable, which is part of one of the sources of many qualities that others have identified in admissions in the uk. so the admissions i talk about academic abilities and aptitude for a subject. i'll read you a quote from the director of undergraduate admissions at oxford burkey said to me we are taking students are really only need to be good at mathematics, and is talking about for people who are applying to study math at oxford. it doesn't really matter whether they got any social skills or have interest in liberal arts or humana's as long as they're good mathematicians. soaking you can effectively thinking about what marriage is

in britain. so that's -- merit. that's a context in which to just thinking about admissions in these two places. i'm going to start with some of my findings in the united states. there's two pieces of parts to kind of how students thought about admissions in the united states. one is that the thought of admissions as needing to be, evaluations didn't be calibrated according to advances. if you have been, if you come from a poor family and you don't have a lot of educational opportunities and that needs to be taken into account. if you have come with a lot of privilege and you'v you gone toe very elite high school, that also needs to be taken into consideration in terms of looking at the whole picture. these are kind of calibrated evaluations with individual merits according to life circumstances. the second piece is collective merit. let me stick with calibrated merit.

if you have a very hard life, let's say you got and b's instead of straight a' as much t work 20 extra hours and netiquette and i think that speaks a lot more than if you got straight a's because you have to provide for a family or help provide for them. so i think it should be taken into account. and so there's this idea that that should, people are interested inequality might say that's a good thing that they're taking this into account. now related to calibration, the ways students thought about calibration weight related to the ways they thought about race and the roles that race plays in society. i have a chapter in the book why talk about students, the race frames. i'll tell you about two of the race frames right now and have that shapes the views on calibration. so the first way that students can one of the ways was a kind

of color blindness frame. that is, raised as role in society apart from its coincidence with class. about half of white students in the united states had this perspective. if you think that race doesn't play a role apart from its coincidence with class you think calibration should be only by social class. so here's a student, i'll call them alex vicky says i think they should consider social economic background of the difficulties people have. if her from the same situation a background you face the same problems. if a white kid had sent an upbringing with bears at the same income level as a black kid, i don't think the black it should have an advantage of me if we both came from the same background. so again, really saying that these are kind of separate kind of issues, class and race. on the other hand, a minority of students, and this was predominant student of color but there were a few white students had what i call a power analysis

frame. this is this is a frame in which students on the significant of race as playing, as having shaping and unequal power relationship in society related to race. it really emphasizes the way that power operates the racial inequality. so for the students, thinnest of the ways racial inequality in particular effect affects minory views and the thought that it was a separate sort of thing than race. so for those since they thought calibration should happen by both race and class. and so this is calibration again according to the way students think about race but overall calibration was pretty common among both students. the second part of admissions in the united states was this notion of what i call the collective merit of a cohort. i think this will sound familiar to most of you, if you've ever been a student in the united states. that is everyone has a hook, and

together we make a diverse group that leads to better learning, better overall college experience. it's the way 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 pieces of marriage. it could be your a great musician, an athlete, a legacy even an racist part of this as well. here's a student talking about athletics and the student says tyou to think having athletes were quote-unquote less qualified. i no longer viewed as less qualified. i'd even as qualified at a different way. i was surprised to students talk talking legacies in this way. legacies meaning if your parents went to university you get a leg up in admissions. i thought surely students would reject that. so here's one the students at harvard who says giving the people went to harvard are much more likely to donate and continue donating to the

university if their children go to harvard, i think that's a reason advantage them in admissions. remember, harvard has this 30 billion endowment and yet there's this idea that bring in that money is a reason to advantage the students. now when students receive all session have a hook that -- being black or latino becomes another form of diversity. and so here's a student who says ethnic diversity at that's much did class a summit was a world class b and a blueprint it's a different sort diversity to add. you can hear this problematic commodification of racial black and latino students. there's an assumption that a black and latino students on campus are benefiting from this consideration. now, this kind of way of thinking about admissions

coupled with what i call a diversity frame leads to support for affirmative action. the diversity frame is this, that students, that race is a cultural identity that shapes individuals worldviews and cultural practices in positive ways. it's this positive thing, something silver, a a multicultural perspective. this was nearly universal, this diversity frank or i should say that these friends are not mutually exclusive. the student could only diversity frame as well as a power analysis frame or less commonly power analysis and colorblindness. but this is very common among white students and students of color alike. and at least two support for affirmative action. i should say whenever we ask students should university consider race or ethnicity in admissions, the most common response is yes, and so that we

can have a diverse student body in which we have a rich kind of educational experience. i didn't hear an response to the question as much kind of yes because it affects peoples life chances. or yes because there's racial inequality. both of these pieces of the admissions, perspective has downstream consequences for race relations on campus. i'm going to come to that. what are the consequences? the first one and is the title of the book, "the diversity bargain" is at this. white students on this campus is support affirmative action in as much as it benefits themselves. it benefits themselves that this kind of creating of this diverse environment. and so as long as it can of contributes to the own educational experience, they are for it. but this has certain expectations that come along with that view.

and the first expectation is what i call the integration imperative. and that is this, that students are expecting the black and latino peers in particular to integrate because that is of course what they are therefore. so here's a student who was at harvard who says i think harvard is a pretty diverse place but i think that diversity into being a lot of different groups that some self select an associate with their particular culture. i don't know there's much interaction between the groups. then we asked her to elaborate on perspective and she sent it really bothers me because it makes it really difficult to get to know people. because i'm not going to join the black student association and most of the groups i am in are not -- because of that a a white student association who probably get in a lot of trouble. i think it's just upset because the interaction event with

people from different backgrounds have been so great, especially coming from school when it was a lot of that. you can see few things, one is it's about her own experience and what that is brings her own experience. i don't want to be misunderstood that there is a lot of social science research that shows there are incredible benefits to this, to this interracial interaction peoples views shift. they become less racially prejudiced a whole host of research that shows these benefits. i want to argue that focusing on that alone is problematic for some reasons i described. the other thing to notice is that she focus she said the black students are not coming to integrate with me. i'm not going to join the black students association. this idea since of color needing to integrate into white spaces. rather than her making that in the other direction. there's an equation of black association of white student association.

the lack of recognition of inequality, one might have one and not the other aunties historically white colleges. this identification is what i call the reverse this commission script. that is the students were anxious affirmative actually to what they perceived as reverse this commission. if it went too far result. we estimate about whether the expense racial discoloration. the student says if i hadn't gone into harvard i would've felt i didn't -- been just americans. someone else i knew wa who was equally qualified and was a minority, if he had it openly. it's this script that's ready to deploy, the student got into harvard, it's hard to, so there's no opportunity that is been forsaken. and yet this script is out there, this worry, this fear is

out there as a result. and the last part of this diversity bark is this, understand of race and ethnicity, and it means that if black and latino students are on campus, and if i become white student, then the end of a particular that is different to my own. but i proceed be different to my own in order to kind of in which me. so here's a student of the parent who says i don't think someone check the black box or the latino box that tha should e what helps get them in. maybe in the interview they find that their latino, they done all these things that make them at something different to the cultural fabric of harvard, i know people who are like a quarter mexican who got the latino scholar award and her entire experience has been a white experience. she has a specific idea of what it means to have a latino experience, and the student doesn't fit that. and so she feels that that

student should benefit from this. and that there's an expectation again to contribute to the cultural fabric of the university. so this diversity bargain is embedded in a way that students think about merit and race. the last thing i will say and this is kind of more as a preview to the british case is, i get the sense of the students were evaluating their peers. they are looking and wondering what got you in? i see, you are a musician, there's an assumption about the black and latino peers about being less qualified, lower test scores, et cetera. you can imagine that climate that can create. so overall students echoing, and in a book i do comparison of what the words student sandwiches on the admission, like the website. it's uncanny those parallels. and then you're the sort of

consequences of the way to think about this related to race. i'm going to turn to the british case which is much more simple. they have very kind of standard symbol country based on individuals. one student said oxford has a very clear stated aim of that is to maintain its position in an intellectual society. another student said ultimately we should just be blank faces. we should just all be admitted totally unmarried. the phrase merit is a given. here's a student who went to an underperforming high school, and the students as i think it should be very much based on merit rather than on background. personally if i knew i'd been positively, publicly discriminated, for being from a state comprehensive school i think when i came i would find it a lot more difficult because i feel i have not heard my place to be here. so i think these to place a think about admissions also has this unintended consequence of affecting the ways that

nontraditional students think about themselves and their place in the universities. i didn't hear this language in the united states, this feeling of i shouldn't be here. that the student elven other students as well in britain. in britain students really didn't have, didn't talk about calibrating evaluations of merit. if you get the highest score, you get to come to oxford. nor was it any idea of collective merit which is a very american thing. here's a student who says, came from a very elite boarding school took you said you get to oxford as a result of your education, no matter how naturally brought you are he has to do uneducated. the wealth distribution is assignment white distance of access to the bets education. the state schools are of lower quality in my belief in areas of greater ethnic density. there's an acknowledgment on equal opportunities but that kind perception of an equal opportunity doesn't change the way students think admissions should happen.

that's a k-12 issue, not a higher education issue or oxfords problem, some students talked about. so overall british studen studet very different understanding of merit compared to the united states students, right? a kind of blank slate approach in britain at a much more complex approach in the united states, but what they share in common is that in both of these national contacts, students are reproducing what their admission office essay, really to a tee. almost regurgitating what they been hearing for so many years as a go to the admission process and it went on campus and that gets reproduced again. like the students they largely don't critique with the universities do. in britain there was a differet diversity bargain. in britain white students expect, except that all of the peers as intellectual equals. this is slightly different from yours where you heard all of these mumblings of like i wonder

that student got in, et cetera. but i didn't hear as much of that. there was a tacit acceptance of minority peers, the small number of minority peers on campus but there's also a bargain that they sort of expressed in britain. this was an exchange first and foremost no vision for increasing equity in admissions outcomes that you are that early when the students really sort of say unequal opportunities but that's too bad. one student said underrepresentation is a problem but it's a oxfords problem. another student says i've had friends at oxford have come here and frankly not been bright enough and i struggled and had a miserable time. i don't think that's fair. it's miserable being at oxford if you you're not good enough. oxford isn't the place where your tutor was spent extra time kicking you. it's ironic because these universities are public universities and heavy tutorial system we had this one on one teaching system which one would

think is a better way to help students who have not had the same educational opportunity. if they're not prepared to take on extra responsibility, that's not fair to anyone. the student talks about this and then makes clear that it's not universities role to help the students pick the responsibility in my opinion lies in primary school or secondary schools. that's what the problem is, not at this level. and again there's a recognition of inequality but a lack of recognition of a role for the university to play in attenuating that are addressing when students arrive with different skill sets. the second piece of this is there's a real denial of minority peers experiences, and so i was too uncomfortable when i read, i will read you this quote but i feel like i should give a trigger warning when i read it.

this student says i'm slightly irritable when it comes to people crying wolf. and by that i mean doing what they do best which is playing the race card saying just because i'm black, that really annoys me because it's so unfounded in england. there were plenty of pretty severe racist incidents on oxford campus just with testing this research so there's plenty of racism in england and on oxford campus in particular. but the student is denying that. it's so untrue. you see racism so much in other countries which we don't have here. so again there's of this denial that this is even an issue in british society. she was not the only want to express this. i want to give an example. i don't know if it's made it to nyu bite at harvard, there was a campaign by substance called we are all harvard which was about how black students felt excluded from the campus and they held these placards and kind of, describing micro-aggressions that experienced.

so oxford a few weeks later came out with, the student says, she's quoting some, your english is so great and she says thanks, i was born in london. hashtag unimpressed. so this kind of took off and interestingly, institution responsible quite different in these two national context but what happened a few days later surprise me even more, which was we had this. we are all oxford as a response. this is a group of students who wanted to counter that message. you can see her placard says we enjoy celebrate diversity at the oxford university student union international favorites login that denial of the experience of the young woman right before in her critique of the university. so there's this denial and there's a chapter i talk about this culture of racial jokes and a student talks of racial jokes which are rampant and the part of a kind of elite private

school culture that came to this campuses as well. and again i denial of minority experiences. so overall there's this story of status legitimization and different ways of think about race and merit, very similar in students basically expressing the narrative that legitimate that own success. they really reproduce this language of their administrators, and in doing so the embracing a process they no doubt result in which disadvantaged groups are systematically underrepresented. students assume that the definition is the best of the best, the most better one, the one that brings the most deserving students to campus and the unspoken follow-on is that students who don't get in our undeserving or less deserving and interestingly, i kind of

started this thinking that if we have all this public discussion that maybe that's going to put a crimp in these beliefs, but in fact, it might kind of exacerbate beliefs in meritocracy. so when your status is called into question it might cling to it a little more. this is what mary talked about minutes ago indie book the velvet glove. she talked about how legitimate might be this desire may be exacerbated when he gets called into question and when this is public discussion of inequality. and overall these universities, and it's not just these top universities. it's most university getting increase on selected. so every year, i'm sure in what you does this, there's a campus newspaper article, lowest admit rate everywhere and supposed be a signal that our quality is improving.

our status is rising. like this is something to celebrate. there's this belief that becoming more and more exclusive is a good thing and it fuels this believe in meritocracy. and it leads to what was called ultra meritocracy. we know that research shows when systems become more exclusive it leads to greater inequality in terms of the outcome. and more reliance on these kind of quantitative measures like sat scores that we know have racially biased kind of outcomes. and eating to compensate even more with programs like affirmative action which are on shaky legal ground. i also want to point out that universities also applicable in this legitimation. their status is also a stake. again because the universe is trying to climb that status hierarchy of the "u.s. news & world report" kind of rankings.

and so there's this policy feedback loop where they, they are kind of, they're talking about admissions in particular ways and students kind of repeat that and then they will go on and take those beliefs and the waste think about race in meritocracy and equity an opportunity into the job, the world, the labor market when to leave these universities. i think it's important for universities to think about the production of these views and but that does and how that perpetuates, plays a role in perpetuating inequality in providing little vision for reducing inequality, especially racial inequality. it might be self-interest and dominates over symbolic politics. remember in the beginning of talked about i juxtaposed of yoh a self-interest perspective. it that when there's a significant investment in a system of rewards that self-interest kind of dominates

and leads to this desire to protect that kind of legitimacy and that status. when the students are working incredibly hard, they're getting in, they feel the thrill sense of the cumbersome. i can understand that but it sort of perhaps deletes them to these views. so overall i really see this work as a limited in how the system of report are not just about the rewards they meet out. it's a knock on effect of the way we do these things. also shape and reflect as reflect individuals. today i talked about how they affect race relations on campus. in the book i talk a lot more about race relations, i talk about the culture of racial jokes in britain and the united states about the way students interact or have this fear of being perceived as racist and now that's tied to these views in the united states as well.

some going to stop here and i will look forward to your comments and questions. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, dr. warikoo, for your exciting, wonderful talk. right now if you have -- great. one question. >> thank you. i had a question with regards to the british students that have a denial of there being a problem of racism in their institution. do you think there subconsciously doing a comparison to like institutional oppression in the history of racism in the u.s. and other places? and maybe subconsciously thinking well, we don't have the establishment of hbcus or the need for that comes amid we're not as racist because we don't have that history. >> did you say, what, they don't

have it in britain? repeat the question, i'm sorry. the echo is a little hard to -- >> i'm asking if british students, maybe they're doing subconsciously a comparison to institutional oppression and racism in britain comparatively to the u.s. because they don't have that history may be of like the necessities to establish lichen hbcu because up until sometime in the '60s both institutions didn't even accept black people. do you think maybe they are thinking to themselves we don't have that same problem here so we don't have, it's not overtly racist in britain? >> absolute. i mean, the u.s. looms large in britain as it does in many countries, and there is this idea that the u.s. as a race oriented society but we don't have race, we have class. the railed is the split racial inequality in britain and display of class inequality in the united states. we know like there's data that shows that. but there is a lack of the kind

of narrative about racial inequality. thathat is so changing in the lt few years is a little bit more talk. there's a report, remember in early years of this research i found this table on oxford admissions website that shows admission statistics by race. ever black, british black, though as i think there was one student who got in, this one year and i thought, i just assumed it was a typo. two years later, this counselor came out, a member of parliament and he basically like plastic and he wrote an op-ed and said that our colleges, so the college system where no vaccine has been admitted in five years. so this comment play of exclusion in britain. it's just not kind in the public domain. people just don't talk about because i don't think about their society as a kind of racialized society. i think in the united states we please have a bit of attention. i argued book we can do a lot

more but we have the history of the civil rights movement which really sort of come and desegregation and this really put race front and center in the united states in a way i think is a helpful start. i think we're a long way to go but i think that is the difference in the uk for shipping and uk they think of itself as a postcolonial society in some sense. but even that is very muted. britain sees itself as a sort of annapolis, there was this neville and colonizer -- benevolent colonizer. ..

i did try to look at students by year but i still hadenough data to conclude but what i will say is we talked a lot about their views shifting . and it was especially related to this idea of selective merit . a lot of students said i used the think, you heard it in the one about athletics. i used to think it's not fair but now isee they create . school spirit so i think it's a good thing. stephanie's reaction was alot of that as well. i had students talk about being the daughter of a

politician , a conservative politician who said my dad views shifted when i got here, i realized that diversity is a great thing and it really hasn't reached my campus experience so now i'm on i'm in favor of affirmative action though those are things you would see and in terms of, you askedabout faculty of color . major discipline, yes. yes. yes. [inaudible] sociology, i have a little bit of a bias because i'm a sociologist but i don't write that in the book but i noticed that i'm confident enough to say this because of my lens but there was this thing that sociology is basically history of inequality in the 20thcentury in the united states and we did talk about how they learned about , they understood racial inequality and the production of racial inequality in terms they didn't before that. so again, it's because this

was not designed as a book systematically by discipline, i'm hesitant to make any causal claims but there's also this, there's a little bit of a, it's hard to say which way the arrow goes but keep kids come into college with their disposition in terms of how they tend to see the world. those kids get disgusted as they come to a new place, they're away from their families, and age when they are trying to change the way they think about the world, they're encountering these different ideas they might shift right? but there's students that might be taking that kind of sociology 101 class or that sociology and race class but i do think those students then gain a language that they didn't have before, it's a sense of the ways of thinking about the world. the other piece of the story is that the kind of

orientationprograms at harvard and brown, we're talking about the harvard and brown differences , harvard has this orientation program called the third world transition program which is a three freshman orientation program where half of the students of color attend and it says very political experience where students, the workshops in that program are like racism, sexism, colonialism, abel is in and a lot of students talk about that as a transformative experience. they say it sounded like a cool thing or i wanted to come to campus early and their whole worldview was shaped by that so it's kind of an unusual program but it says that being on campus, that shapes the way they think about race and fosters this power analysis view of race and background in particular were students of color. so that's another way the

university is not too classist in this program. ... thank you so much. i had to, first just a clarification question. i thought that the admissions process often is done by colleges so every college has its own admissions process so first of all, could you explain more about how that works and who you actually talked with. you say you spoke with the other veterans admission officer there and i wanted to invite you to say more about your interviews with students of color at both places because i'm curious to know how things were different for that. >> so yes, i didn't talk about that but it's a company picture but initiatives are done so oxford is comprised of different colleges.

to apply to a specific college and they, it's unclear how to make those decisions but part of that is there are colleges that are known for being old, elite. those are the ones that have admitted a student that's black in five years and more that are working with students and a lot more that are in the middle-of-the-road. so sense of prior particular college, i interviewed students at two particular colleges. just methodologically to get a narrow sample and these were colleges that were, two of those middle-of-the-road, not super elite, not non-elite and also there are tables that show the achievement levels of the different colleges and they were in that middle 50 percent. there is a director of undergraduate admissions across the university. and it's unclear how much, how much power he has.

it seems like overtime the coming a little more centralized. there's a little more trading going on between the colleges so if the college rejects a student, they might go to another college. at students get into the school at the student says i will go to any college and another college is looking for more students and i don't know how those processes happen, that wheeling and dealing at the end. it probably has to do with how much is a particular major, etc. that's the college, it didn't seem to affect the story. they didn't talk about the colleges being different in terms of admissions and what they are actually doing. kids of color, i don't know where to begin. they are very different. you have perspectives so in the us, kids of color as you might imagine don't notice specifics, they don't see themselves and they shouldn't as their white peers, they are geared there to get an education like everybody else and they did appreciate diversity like their white

peers and i think white students of color have a different understanding of racial diversity so those two things that the third world transition program for example talked about coming there and developing these relationships because of course students of color are diverse, coming from a lot of different backgrounds. a lot of different perspectives and talked about getting to know kids of different perspectives whereas white students would come in to say other students of color are friends with each other before we even get here and we don't have access to them because they are already friends. they saw them as more of this group of students of color than white students so again, a different way of thinking about racial diversity. they were more likely to have a power analysis perspective that it was not a majority view among black and latino students either, it was about half and i don't think any of

them expressed a colorblindness perspective. and so they also talked about this kind of loss and this tension and i talk about this in my talk but this interracial tension on campus. so this sort of anxiety that exists between white students being called racist or being seen as racist in the sense of color. bringing with them very racialized experiences and worrying about how that's going to be on campus in that class. in britain, the students of color like that working-class students that i interviewed seem to buy intothe culture and the kind of silliness of the university much more . i'm here because i worked hard and a few of them have a

kind of almost a culture of poverty perspective on other people of color or immigrants and their children. and it just seems like there, it made me think that almost perhaps to make it to oxford as a person of color in britain or second-generation was the category i use, that maybe you have to embody this identity as a sort of elite and someone who buys into the system in a way i don't think you needed to in the united states. they did however, the one exception to that i think was this culture of racial jokes and they talked about how people say it's a joke but if you don't go along with the job and you are seen as a debbie downer and that you are just no fun. there's really no kind of way to you to enter into that critique. i should say that

historically and even today, there are some more radical students on the oxfordcampus. i didn't go out and seek them and i think they are very small in number and i think , i looked up , i'd heard about the organization, this group and i'm forgetting the name but it's this kind of radical oxford students of color and when i looked them up, that group had morphed into a tutoring program for local youth so i think that frame, students don't have access to it in the same way and it might be if you have that disposition, you're not going to come to us because it's not known to be a place where there are few racial minorities and it has that culture and students talked about that, that my black friends didn't want to hide here and went to college in london and a college in london because they thought they would be happier there. and you can understand that perspective, given the culture on the campus but i think that produces this

culture and there's no real way of shifting it when you don't adapt it to , students of color have a better experience that make white people want to come. i wanted to go back to this beginning of the top where you started talking about decision-makers as those emerging from these elite universities. you talk a lot about feedback and reproduction but also a knowledge and of course there's some transformation in the experience of being at a university. i wonder from your comparative research design you chose that both had high inequality and low social mobility. you expect differences and other university experiences if you were to go to other spots on the distribution in terms of these questions of merit and diversity? >> that's a good question. i think we know if we look at kind of the continent that

it's interesting that especially in the united states but also in britain,we have a very unequal , there's oxford and cambridge and then there's the russell group and then there's the red brick. and in the us we have like the elite, there's like rankings. there's safe schools all the way to community colleges but most colleges are not selected in the united states and two-year colleges. and in the continental europe there's, it's a lot flattered. people are more likely to go to the university in their town area and there's a lot less variation between universities so there isn't this thing of getting into that top university in the same way that we have in the united states and britain and that coincidence, i don't think that's a coincidence. i think it's because the societies are structured unequally and higher

education emerges unequally in order to kind of place people in this stratified system. so if i had to predict, i'm not an expert in other parts ofeurope but if i had to predict, i would say there's a lot less investment in these kind of systems of meritocracy and there is quantitative research that asked people about , do you think that people are paid according to their in some measure of merit, i don't remember what measure they used and americans are most likely to stay deaths and there's also a question about you think this is a good thing and americans are more likely to say yes, we should be staying according to our, how good we aren't things or what have you. so there is a stronger belief in meritocracy in the united states and then again, i think when you have this stratified system, everybody wants to be able to talk but then there's like, do the job, i'll get into university and i can do what i want to

do and then they scramble in the same way and we know that leads to unequal outcomes. >>. >> one last question. >> you think that the marketization and privatization in the us lends itself inequality like for example, use s news and world report, and especially in the top 100 uses tips to benchmark themselves so they look at things like admissions and the amount of donors that contribute to universities. to let themselves go higher on that list. do you think that students deal with that as consumers and what their return on investment will be after graduating lends itself to

how this inequality persists in the us because students are looking to become whole individuals or something like that were total citizens or looking to see what their salary is going to be and not what type of person they will be when they graduate? >> i'm hearing two questions, one is this question about ranking and what that does. there's a great new book called engines of anxiety by the s blood and michael stoddard where they talk about the impact that rankings have on universities but when administrators are doing in response to the rankings and trying to increase their status in the rankings and this is the sort of everyone , everyone compares themselves and they're always looking up, a savior sister universities are the ones that put themselves above that so there is this thought that when you have a hierarchical system, everyone wants to talk and what that does is that can often neglect the need for the students and it seems to me that they need that education the most so merit-based scholarships are a big thing now for not the most conscious but right

below there because they are trying to get those top students. and again, to increase their rankings. that increases their sat scores, gpa so i do think there are damaging effects of those rankings . colleges are responding to that foster inequality. and you asked, i forget the second part of the question. >>. [inaudible] >> yeah, i'm not sure what to do. i would say that these universities, and these are exceptional universities and they are so elite and i chose them because i thought this is where students wouldn't have the same anxiety about both, if it were a different system i would have gone in ivy league or oxford or cambridge so i chose them deliberately because of that but in a way, they get a pass on the return in investment because in other research, i've seen well, i've got the

harvard degree, i can major in philosophy and art history but it doesn't matter that's very unique to these elite places. i don't know, i feel like higher institutions are changing dramatically and are we going to have like a credentialing system? i don't know what the next thing is going to be. and i don't know that i can that. but i think it's an important aspect. >>. >> talk about, do you illustrated this incredible attention that a lot of the white us students talk about in terms of exceptionally station of diversity. the first, it has to be something that there is a demand for integration so we are diverse but we must interact. otherwise what's the point of diversity so the second one was, at the same time you cannot be too much like the

mainstream, if you are too much in the mainstream it suggests you are not diverse or you almost move that but it makes me think about the literature on acceptable diversity, how the middle upper class white suburbs would be very into this diversity but what they mean are maybe asian-americans, not latinos so i was wondering in the interviews, how did students recognize reconcile or did they reconcile distention of diversity in two seemingly paradoxical elements? >> that's a great question. it didn't, because, you're talking about in the united states, there's this very american thing and it didn't come out because those students of color get certified by the university as this good minority because they've gotten into harvard so students said things like, i've never met someone who doesn't deserve to be here. they really felt like okay, all my peers are legit. so i think because of that, they are already acceptable

is what they've made, they assume and i think know that their peers who are on campus have exceptional educational academic backgrounds, superbright. really talented in a lot of different ways, not be taking in the giving and i think that question might be, the answer to that might be different in different kinds of places.where affirmative action, it plays a different role but i think on these campuses, i didn't hear that because of that selection that they have before they even get there. >> in the interviews with the students of color, this notion of, a fine of quality where students of color in order to better survive reform and perform their differences in the kind of white dominated space, knowing that they are if they

are too much like everyone else, are they even aware of this perception? >> they are aware, i don't think that they feel like they need to kind of play into that. there is definitely a kind of performance aspects, students of color talk and this is not just in other research that they feel like they can kind of let their guard down in minority only spaces so that there is a real positive value of life, a black students association or the center for students of color or these kind of spaces where they feel like they are experienced yet poor founded, which is not the dominant experience in the university. so there is a contrast that seen in these integration spaces having to have a particular space and feeling like they can relax in these minor spaces but that variation in that. there are also students of color who talked about being a minority space and feeling

like they didn't fit in for whatever reason, maybe because they keep them from an unusual class background or they were adopted or whatever it is soi think it's complex there's so much diversity among students of color as well . >> hi, two quick questions. the first one was you said, you mentioned you had graduate students in the interviews so i'm wondering about the interviewers and how you think the perception of the people doing the interviewing, the participants may have at all affected the things. just in terms of who did the interviews so we could talk about that and if it was the same people in a different country. and then secondly, so you , you said there's these ideas in the student's mind, i'm wondering in terms of the different universities in the structuring of the extracurricular experience, that you sort of affected upon the american college experience and there's

definitely a bigger focus in the us on the things that happen by the plots with them, i assume a bigger focus in britain on the class and so i'm curious if there's any kind of difference in terms of how how these universities structure the experience of diversity and how that may have also affected what you talked about when answering the questions. >> so i'll say a little bit about the message. so i'd like to do my interviews myself and starting a new project, i'm determined to do all the interviews myself but for this project i really felt like i if i were going to talk about white students about race, that i as a person of color i couldn't get open and honest responses and i couldn't make those students feel comfortable with me. so i decided i was going to hire a white doctoral student to do these interviews in the united states, i'll talk about that in a second and because of that, i then thought like, if the white

students of color, that would bias my lens having all these views and developed a rapport with students of color and not even have meeting these white students and i thought i hired a student of color to interview the students of color. so as one student of color on the round campus and one on harvard, i didn't have the one on brown campus and one of my students interviewed in the unitedstates. in britain it was a little more tricky because of class . so the way you speak in the uk, that identifies your class. pretty clearly and even i as an american when i lived there, i could kind of tell someone's accent, where they came from. >> and not always to some extent. >> i happen to get around that and i can't claim this was, i was lucky so i talked

to a colleague in oxford and she recommended a doctoral student who happens to be from western europe. and she was a, an officer and i did, i was a little nervous about that. at the end, it worked out well because she signaled this kind of silliness through her oxford student for being from western europe but she also obviously didn't have a class, she had no class in her voice so she had a foreign accent. and i think that in the end, after the research i felt like in the uk it would've mattered less because students that achieve at all the interviews in britain, that students said things that i wouldn't have expected they would say in polite company. and in the uk to her. so i felt like it didn't expect those in the end but i was a little more nervous about that. >> and it so in terms of

extracurriculars in diversity, they talk a lot about this in the book. there's an institutionalization of diversity on these campuses. britain, there's little that. they do have minority students groups but that's the extent of it. in terms of areas studies, they will have asian studies aboutsouth asia or africa. but not like asian american studies for british class studies or anything like that. >> and in the us, they , in harvard and brown, the institutionalizing in different ways and this is historical as well so for example, brown, i did these students of color versus the third world center. they just a few years ago changed the name to the brown center for students of color and there's a signaling of this is a space for students of color and it's a , third world identity comes out of the 70s, is very political whereas harvard called the harvard foundation for intercultural students really focused on integration. and historically as well it

was deliberately named back when it was constituted at the university. there are other ways in which brown as a third world transition program, very different orientation. college orientation programs on diversity are 90 minutes, they do this conversation with their freshman hall that don't have the same impact on students and so there are all these, i think what that does is for the students of harvard, at brown they develop a more robust understanding of racial inequality that they didn't learn or could have learned in school in a language to make meaning of real experiences that they've had but the white students are very alienated from that on the brown campus because they are not participating and they don't get why are they all hanging out at the school center, i don't understand that. at harvard, students think of

color and white students are more positive about the diversity work but it was their big event was harvard foundation's big event is, i'm blanking on the name. it's multicultural performance event. it'll come to me. when students talked about that as a big experience, i had this great experience with diversity, their acceptances down and then the barbara centers dance and they all got together and we're dancing to this pop song so that was their version of diversity so it was positive and they appreciated it but it lacks that kind of vision for how do we address racial inequality so i think there are positives and negatives to both of these models and we night need to find a way to institutionalize all that and bring students into kind of this understanding and the complexity of race.

>> thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversation] >>. [inaudible conversation] here's a look at festivals participated being public to the spring. according to the book history new source and publishers weekly. coming out in march, john didion shares her journal entries from the southern road trip in 1970 and her time reporting on the patty hearst trial in 1976 in towns

spent west. new york times former asia correspondent howard prince reports on china's global ambitions in everything under the heavens. and immunologists stephen hatch recalls his work in liberia during the west african ebola outbreak in inferno. a look at publishers weekly's most anticipated books of the spring continues with locking up our own. defender james foreman's thoughts on the role african-american leaders played in the rise of mass incarceration. that book comes out in april. also that month, new york times science reporter gino kalama examines how a genetic anomaly affected a family in south carolina in mercies in disguise and in the best band under heaven, michael wallace pries the history of america's western expansion through the ill-fated journey of the donner party. and published in may, former secretary of state condoleezza rice weighs in on the challenges inherent to a