After a brief interlude for an episode of LGBTQ+ rights, Elise is back with a second episode on the affirmative action decision, joined by Professor Richard Ford of Stanford Law School. Professor Ford offers his take on many of the same questions we put forward to Professor Stulberg: Is the diversity rationale still alive? What will the college admissions landscape look like after this decision? And how will socioeconomic status be used as an attempt to maintain diversity? He also walked Elise through the nuances of the majority opinion — namely, the Court refused to overturn Grutter and ..read more

As a brief interlude to coverage of the Court's affirmative action decision, Hannah and Elise sat down with Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, to discuss the legal battles to stop anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and the implications of the Court's recent decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. This is a long overdue conversation: LGBTQ+ rights are increasingly under attack across the country, but it is children and students who are most frequently the target of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including attacks on their right to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, th ..read more

Two weeks ago, the Court struck down race-conscious affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University. In the first of many episodes to come, Elise and Hannah break down the opinion with Lisa Stulberg, a professor of sociology at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Chief Justice Roberts' opinion answered some of our questions — universities will no longer be able to consider race as they historically have, and this Court no longer sees diversity as a compelling enough reason for affirmative action. But it also raised SO many questions ab ..read more

It's been a while! In the latest episode of the High School SCOTUS podcast, we're back with a wide-ranging conversation between Elise and Professor Jonathan Glater of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Professor Glater is an expert on all things higher education and student loan debt; he is also the Faculty Director of the Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice at Berkeley. He joined the podcast to discuss two pending cases before the Court, Biden v. Nebraska and US Dept. of Education v. Brown, both of which consider the constitutionality of President Biden's student ..read more

In the latest episode of the High School SCOTUS Podcast, Elise and Hannah sat down with Julia Olson, founder and executive director of Our Children's Trust, a non-profit, public interest law firm that provides legal services to youth in an effort to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. We discuss Julia's passion for law and environmentalism, her realization that she could use her legal ability to fight the climate crisis and protect the next generation, her monumental litigation in Juliana v. United States, and her advice to young people who are desperate for change. Julia does ground ..read more

In the fifth episode of the affirmative action series, Elise and Hannah spoke with Professor Richard Sander of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law about his perspective on the detrimental effects of racial preferences in higher education. They also discussed the importance of considering and evaluating empirical evidence related to affirmative action, and what he noticed at the Supreme Court's oral arguments on Oct. 31. Professor Sander has written extensively on the issue of race conscious policies, especially in the University of California higher education system, and be ..read more

In the fourth episode of their affirmative action series, Elise and Hannah sit down with Professor Lisa Stulberg, who teaches the sociology of education at New York University. Their wide-ranging conversation included discussion of the charter school debate, school choice and desegregation in K-12, and America's misconception that merit is neutral. They also found time to talk about how our society inflates the impact of race-conscious policies, and Professor Stulberg's perspective on why diversity is so crucial in higher education. Professor Stulberg is an expert in the field, and this episod ..read more

In the third episode of the affirmative action series, Elise talks with Professor Richard Ford about reframing affirmative action and considering how social and cultural perceptions of race-conscious policies have overstated their ramifications. They also discuss Professor Ford's time as a high school journalist, his experience as a housing policy consultant, and his predictions for what will come after the Supreme Court's rulings in this year's affirmative action cases. Mentioned in this episode: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) Parents Involved in Community Schools v ..read more

In the second episode of their series on affirmative action, Elise and Hannah sit down with Professor Jonathan Masur of the University of Chicago Law School to discuss his study "Assessing Affirmative Action's Diversity Rationale," written with Professors Justin Driver, Kyle Rozema, and Adam Chilton. The study analyzed how citations to law review journals changed in the years after implementing a diversity policy as a microcosm to empirically measure the impact of diversity in higher education. Listen to the episode to hear more about their findings and the study's relevance to the cultural an ..read more

This term, the Supreme Court will decide two cases concerning the future of affirmative action: Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.  Over the next few months, Elise and Hannah will be speaking with legal scholars and education experts from across the country about affirmative action. Affirmative action and its interaction with the Supreme Court is a messy, tangled, and complicated topic with unique relevance to students and the education system. That also makes it the ideal subject for thi ..read more