http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i19/19a01901.htm
From the issue dated January 18, 2008
By PETER SCHMIDT
The affirmative-action programs at the nation's public colleges and professional schools are about to undergo a kind of scrutiny they have long managed to avoid: intensive research that examines whether they actually help the minority students who are their intended beneficiaries. A national consortium of about 20 professors and 10 graduate students has been collecting student data from colleges, law schools, and state bar associations — typically by invoking state public-records laws — with the intent of conducting a long list of studies on how minority students who receive admissions preferences fare in higher education and in the long term.
Colleges and universities have been reluctant to share such information in the past, often because they feared critics of affirmative action would use it to produce ideologically slanted studies that potentially stereotyped or stigmatized minority students. Some advocates of affirmative action remain similarly skeptical of the new consortium's intentions, partly because the researcher who is leading its efforts as principal investigator is Richard H. Sander. Mr. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, has been embraced by conservative activists for his studies that criticize law schools' affirmative-action policies as counterproductive.
However, other scholars involved with the undertaking describe themselves as supporters of affirmative action and characterized their group as committed to studying those policies objectively.
Among them, William D. Henderson, an associate professor of law at Indiana University's Bloomington campus, said he endorses the idea that diversity yields educational benefits for all students and he has no intention of using his research to argue that affirmative action should be abandoned. Nevertheless, he said, "there is a good possibility that we are not getting optimal outcomes right now, to the extent that current policies are backfiring," and "if diversity comes at the expense of young people not getting the education they need, we need to be sensitive to those dynamics."
Neither Mr. Sander nor Jane R. Yakowitz, the consortium's director, would release the names of all those involved with the consortium. But Ms. Yakowitz said the group has "a base of researchers who are neutral or even affirmative-action supporters."
"Not only has there been an effort to get balance, but I think it is important to even skew liberal," Ms. Yakowitz said. "We are looking at something that is clearly politically controversial, and it is important we look at it for the right reasons."
Out in the Sunshine
The research consortium is known as Project Seaphe, with the acronym standing for Scale and Effect of Admissions Preferences in Higher Education. Its members, who include sociologists, economists, and law professors, intend to undertake at least 18 different studies using the information they obtain from higher-education institutions, with the tentative goal of discussing their findings at a conference sometime in 2009, Mr. Sander said.
The consortium is receiving financial support from the Searle Freedom Trust, a Washington-based foundation with libertarian leanings that has been a major supporter of research by the American Enterprise Institute and other conservative groups. In addition to looking at admissions preferences for minority students, it also plans to examine the effects of preferences for low-income students, athletes, the children of alumni, and other subsets of colleges' applicant pools.
The group has submitted freedom-of-information requests to nearly all of the nation's more than 80 public law schools. About 20 promptly gave the consortium the student data it sought. and most others seem willing to fulfill the consortium's information request, Mr. Sander said.
"A lot of schools seem eager to cooperate," Mr. Sander added. "There has definitely been a change in the climate" regarding such data, and "individual schools feel less defensive" about sharing them, he said.
The consortium also has contacted about 100 undergraduate colleges, and has received data from 25 and pledges of cooperation from at least 40 others, Mr. Sander said.
Helping the consortium's efforts, he said, are the strong freedom-of-information laws in place in most states, which higher-education institutions generally interpret as obliging them to provide the consortium with the information it seeks.
Among the law schools that have provided information to the consortium is Ohio State University's. Its dean, Nancy H. Rogers, who recently completed a term as president of the Association of American Law Schools, said last week that "it is hard to have views on research that has not been done." But, she added, "the academy in general is supportive of research," and "most scholars want to see more research, not less."
John H. Garvey, dean of Boston College's law school and the law-school association's new president, said, "You can find in legal education a real difference of opinion about the value of affirmative action." Nevertheless, he said, "I just have to believe that being well informed about what steps are going to be effective in the long run is in everybody's benefit."
Others were less sanguine. Charles E. Daye, a professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has harshly criticized Mr. Sander's past research as biased against affirmative action, expressed suspicion that Project Seaphe had some sort of agenda. "I am not going to characterize the study," he said, but "I can tell you they have a project that is on a mission."
Despite his misgivings about the project, Mr. Daye has agreed to provide the consortium with the findings of his own pending study of diversity on law-school campuses. Although he is not yet ready to release his results, he said, he is obliged to share such information under the terms of the Law School Admission Council grant financing his research.
Shirley J. Wilcher, executive director of the American Association for Affirmative Action, which represents affirmative-action officers at colleges and other public and private institutions, said "we view the likely outcome of this research with skepticism, given Mr. Sander's previous work." "Moreover," she said, "we do not know who the other researchers are or why affirmative-action practitioners were not invited to join this important project," and her group doubts the results of the research "will be useful" to higher-education institutions or minority students.
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