How Public Scholarship Helped Put School Integration Back on the Public Agenda

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

This conversation-style session brings together journalists, scholars and advocates to offer perspectives on public scholarship about one of the nation’s most intractable and complex challenges. After decades of near silence, high-impact media reports have shone new light on racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods as a driver of inequality and social division. They also point to racially equitable integrated schools as an alternative for engendering opportunity, cohesion and fairness. What role have researchers played in putting segregation and integration back onto the cultural and policy agendas? To what extent did collaborative relationships between scholars and advocates help "move" the research into the public sphere via media? What’s next for engaged scholars?

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chairs

• Susan Eaton, Brandeis University

• Derek Black, University of South Carolina School of Law

Participants

• John Brittain, University of the District of Columbia

• Nikole Hannah Jones, The New York Times

• Sarah Carr, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

• Jennifer Jellison Holme, The University of Texas - Austin