Series of the year and delighted with social professor at the graduate school of education. Dr. Is an expert on the relationship between education, racial and Ethnic Diversity and the cultural process and first book called balancing analyzing children of immigrants attending low performing high schools in new york city, and comparatively with london i wont go into details of the second book topic of our exciting her exciting talk today. In addition to her books, natasha has many, many, many, many papers that are published in journals and popular presses including american journal of education. British education ethnic and racial studies. L. A. Times and Washington Post as an aside for those of you of my students ive long assigned one of her pieces for our classes which is a beautiful review of the cultural explanation of educational equalities. She also has numerous number of grants awards from the sociological association, National Signs foundation, and Russell Stage Foundation. Completed her ph. D. In sociology and basm colors in science and arts in math and philosophy from brown university. Help me in warmly welcoming dr. Warku. Thank you for that nice introduction. It is really a delight to be here. I conceived of many of the ideas of this book when i was on leave at Russell Stage Foundation in new york a few years ago so its nice to be back having actually ridge written the book and it wasnt quite there yet a few years ago. So this book is about is there an echo in the room is that okay . Okay this book is about how students of elite universities makes sense of race, and inequality in the United States an britain. And it is really sort of a look, i realized i have no way i dont have a clicker. [laughter] right, thank you. And so im going to talk a lot if this is kind of a focus on the students perspective but i want to start by talking a little bit about inequality United States and britain are highly unequal societies unusually. So if you look at this graph this is just if you look at the horizontal access here this is telling you the relationship between basically what wealthy people earn and what poor the working class earn and in its society. So you can see the United States and britain are higher than almost all countries in terms of that, ine only surpassed by emerging economies and vertical access interracial mobility between what they earn and parents earned again a high level of inequality meaning that we have higher level of correlation between what we earn and what our parents earn compared to again oecd krnghtses. High levels low equality and mobility than kind of similar countries. This is also true by race. If you look at net worth with and another measure of inequality is actually wealth. Median wealth for whites in the United States is 13 times greater than median wealth for blacks in the United States and ten times great or for latinos in the United States. This is also true in britain. If you look at unemployment, job status, accommodation, hsdz we have inequality in britain as with so highly unequal societies so i came to this project wanting to know how elites make sense of their accomplishments in a highly unequality society and make sense of racial inequality in particular and so, you know, i thought this this would give us clues about how inequality gets perpetuated and social policies get passed that continue to maintain this inequality. And you know in particular when inequality is highlighted how do people as especially those who are the winners make sense of our ideology of equal opportunity . And i thought this qowld give us clues about kind of how we might think about shifting the way that we think and talk about race and class and achievement more accurately reflect our opportunities structure and the racial realities in our society. So i decided to look on elite University Campuses in particular because these are places where many elites come of age. Even if they wrnght elite before they entered these institutions. And so how students on the campuses would think about race and merit, matters a lot. No go on to make decisions about working in the media. Hiring decisions social policy decision and so theyll take with them their understanding of what a fair system is what equality opportunity means. How to select people on a fair way with them and as they go on to these positions in the future. And i also remembered my own experience on elite Residential College campus many years ago. I wont say how many. Where, you know, we talked a lot about race into the night with, you know, many of my fell 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 of campuses that i was on. So i was curious about how this experience and residential Higher Education is operates differently in the United States and britain and how that shapes students perspectives differently the United States we have 58s many kind of rate and diversity related policies. We have for many decades department of aron americans studies. Affirmative action on most selective College Campuses. And some places have kind of rate base Student Centers in britain again none of those exists so how does this shape the way students think about these issues is the contact and question that i was really interested in. So how do Students National and University Contact so in the book i also talk about students at brown and harvard and how theyre different as well. And i was going to talk about that and today happy to talk about it in the q and a but ill focus on this take comparison. So so im so okay. So sorry. So how University Contact that is making and i focus in on admissions because this is a kind kind of highly contested do main in which people have a lot of opinions and a lot of thoughts right not just related to affirmative action but affirmative action is at that intersection of merit and race in particular. And we know that admission to these elite universities is unequal right so if you look at this this chart here we see that 15 of students on harvard and brown campuses that two sites of my research are black or latino compared to about a third of young adults in the United States. We also know that about a third of adults in the United States have a college bachelors degree compared to almost all 85 of students on the campus having parents with a college degree. So unequal both in terms of educational background as well as in many terms of race. This is also true in britain where about 7 of young adults are black or south asian, and im sorry 14 of young adults are black or south asian compared to about half of that on Oxford Campus. And the big kind of cleveland that people talk about this brooklyn is what kind of school is people go to and half of students on objection forward and cambridge campuses come from private schools compared to 7 of young people in britain. So unequal again in terms of unequality opportunity and related to race. So the puzzle then is how do students make sense of this inequality especially when theyre sort of hear this narrative of working hard in high school most of them working incredibly hard in high school most of them are going to schools in which pears peers are not getting get universities tol accomplishment and suggest that outcomes are highly unequal. So how so the last question that i address in this book is how what the complication are especially when had we think about a diversity practice and so what might we expect . How might we think that students would think about race admissions so on the one hand we might tick a symbolic politic approach and that theory in Political Science which says that our our ways that we think about policy punishes are related to kind of longstanding ways kind of political dispositions theyre emotional kind of so if you think of yourself as liberal youre going to support affirmative action. Youre going to support the welfare state kind of social welfare policies. And those are, are more likely those kind of identities are more likely to shape political views than say our own seflt interest and narrow individual seflt interest. So this qowld suggest that oops so we might think of emissions to a salient political issue people talk a lot about so so you know there are always articles in the United States in United States and britain about at the motion hads to those places related to affirmative action and otherwise as well so heres the story from the guardian in britain. Heres the story about the rankings always a big news item when rankings come out in the Washington Post always that student that gets into the Ivy League Colleges that always macs news from cnn. And bbc news about colleged a motion so this is something that is very much in the public do main and might expect people to be admission to these places so majority of students on elite campuses identifies liberal. And so we might expect a kind of liberal critique that would mean in the United States that we needs more class in rights diversity to argue with that what you see what you saw earlier and then in britain, you know much more classifying society we need more class diversity perhaps students might be thinking about race as well. More recently on the other hand there might be a much small minority of students is who have a conservative identity. And you know amy binder has a greats new book called becoming right but talks about conservative campus activists. And you know in the United States the conservative critique is we need to end affirmative action right make it class state. This is sort of argument that you hear in the United States. The british kind of admission society we talk about in a second is already kind of conservative but perhaps since my argue that you might t need to favor exam or interview in the admissions process. So thats the sort of symbolic politics approach. On the other hand, we might see a process of kind of what i call state of legitimate. That might reproduce admission that say say related to admissions which would legit mate winners of this contest theyve just gotten in and they have a interest in saying yeah that was fair because i worked really hard. And thats the kind of selfinterest story so it is if there is finish if this is whats beginning on the to say what their Admission Office is saying. And they might be different but they would say that admission is fair in National Context thats the right way to do admissions. And so these are sort of the different ways that we might think about how students would grapple with two issues of inequality and that that sort of contradiction. So okay let me tell you a little bit about this study. This is a kind of an interview based study i sent my graduate student out to interview on harvard grouped and Oxford Campuses we interviewed students across racial license and im going to talk just about white students is today happy to talk about this news much color in the q and a. And also spoke with dean of admissions, spoke with a lot of campus literature onis line, et cetera so just to get a sense of how the institutions thought about their work is really the citys question if. So i mention earlier are to focus in on u. S. U. K. Different comparison as well. So okay, so let me tell you a little bit about admissions before i get into findings so most of you are probably familiar with admissions to universities of the United States it is a very complex kind of system. With a lot of dircht kinds much information, the essay, exams, letter was recommendation, the s. A. T. , your pa and harvard dean of admission hadses about expansive view from something that he wrote in the New York Times again expansive view of excellence. Extracurricular distinction in personal qualities and diversity. And you to keep key phrases in mind when you hear as you hear from the students and what the students are talking about in terms of admission and britain admission is quite different. There are national and University Exams so you first take your National Exam and if you get kind of beyond a particular high cutoff score youre eligible is and then you can go and take some of the subjects that you might apply to have is a university exam. You have got to take that exam and if you qualify you come for a campus interview and unlike interviews in the United States youre u interviewed by academic in your teeld of study so professors who would then be teaching you so, obviously, they have an interest in admitting students who they feel like are, you know, quote unquote teachable which is which is part of the sources of admissions in the u. K. So the admissions side talks about academic abilities and aptitude for your subject and read a quote at objection forward he said to me for students who only need to be really good at mathematics for studying to apply for math at oxford doesnt matter with social skill or interest in humanity or whatever as long as theyre good mathematician so again you can hear a different way of thinking about what merit is in britain. So thats the context in which students are kind of thinking about admissions in these two places. So i want to start with some of my findings in the United States. Theres two pieces of parts to kind of how students thought about admissions in the United States. One is that they thought of admission as needing to be calibrated according to someones circumstances. So you know if youve been, you know, if you come from a poor family and you dont have a lot of Educational Opportunities and that needs to be taken into equity if youve come with with a lot of privilege and gone to like, you know, very elite high school that also needs to be taken into consideration in materials of looking at you. The whole picture. So these are kind of calibrated evaluation of individual merit according to life circumstances the seconds piece in a second is collective merit so stick with calibrated merit for a second and read you from a quote i call im mow she said if you have a hard life you did with a and bs but you have to work like 20 extra hours a week than another kid i think that speaks a lot more than if you got straight as because you have to provide for your family or help provide for them. Coining it should be taken into account. And so theres this idea of that that should shape so those people who are interested in inequality say thats a good thing to take this into account. Now related to calibration, the way that students thought about calibration was related to the ways that they thought about race. And the role that race plays in society. So if a chapter in the book i talk about students but call race frame how they think about the role that race place in americans in british society. And ill tell you about two of the race frames right now and how that shapes their views on calibration. So so the first way that students that it doesnt play apart from coincidence with class and about half of qhiet students in the United States had this perspective. Now, if you think that race doesnt play a role apart from its coincidence with class you think that calibration should be by social class so heres a student, a brown, call him alex he said i think they should consider social economic background and difficulties that people have. If youre from the same situation of background you face the same problems. Like if its a white kid with the same kind of upbrings with income level as a black kid i dont think it should have a advantage if we came from the same background. So again really saying that these are these are kind of separate kind of issues for class and race, and so on the other hand, a minority of students and this is predominantly student of color but a few white students had what i cull a power analysis frame. And this is a frame in which students saw the significance of rate as having a shaping kind of unequal power relationship in society related to race. And it really emphasizes the way that power oarptses through racial inequality. And so for these students, they understood the ways that racial inequality in particular affect it is minority views and they thought that tsh and that thing than race so for those they should happen by call brigs and by class. And so this is calibration was pretty common among most students. Now the second big part of admissions in the yoots was this kind of notion of what i call the collective american cohort and familiar to you if youve been a student in the United States that is that everybody has a hook and together we make a Diverse Group that leads to better learning, better Overall College experience right it is the way that 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 kind of pieces of merit. Right it could be, you know, youre a great musician. Youre an athlete. Actually youre a legacy even. And race is part of this as well. So heres a student talking about athletic and student says i used to think that having athletes quote un, quote