National
Experts Debate Race-Based College Admissions
Sheryll Cashin, a professor of Law at Georgetown, discusses the Michigan ban on affirmative action on Thursday afternoon at Longfellow Hall. Cashin spoke about the race-based affirmative action debate in the United States. (Courtesy of The Harvard Crimson)
(The Harvard Crimson) – Two experts in educational inequality exchanged diverging opinions on race-based affirmative action in the college admissions process at a forum at the Graduate School of Education on Thursday.
The forum, titled “The End of Race-Based College Admissions,” featured Sheryll D. Cashin, an alumna of the Law School and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and Richard J. Rothstein ’63, a visiting scholar at the GSE and a research associate at Economic Policy Institute.
During the discussion, there was disagreement between the two experts on different aspects of the topic. Cashin argued that affirmative action in higher education should be primarily based on social class, whereas Rothstein advocated for a race-based policy that favors African Americans.
Cashin said that colleges’ admissions policies should take into account the socioeconomic background that the student comes from.
