Robert Kim and Kevin Welner discuss Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard College, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decreed that the admissions systems at the University of North Carolina ...(UNC) and Harvard College were unconstitutional. This ruling effectively banned the use of race-based admissions policies (i.e., affirmative action) in higher education. Kim and Welner explore what the ruling might mean for colleges and universities and the students seeking admission to them, implications for preK-12 education, and the larger context of social inequity.
Richard Theodore Greener (1844–1922) was a renowned black activist and scholar. In 1870, he was the first black graduate of Harvard College. During Reconstruction, he was the first black faculty ...member at a southern white college, the University of South Carolina. He was even the first black US diplomat to a white country, serving in Vladivostok, Russia. A notable speaker and writer for racial equality, he also served as a dean of the Howard University School of Law and as the administrative head of the Ulysses S. Grant Monument Association. Yet he died in obscurity, his name barely remembered. His black friends and colleagues often looked askance at the light-skinned Greener’s ease among whites and sometimes wrongfully accused him of trying to pass. While he was overseas on a diplomatic mission, Greener’s wife and five children stayed in New York City, changed their names, and vanished into white society. Greener never saw them again. At a time when Americans viewed themselves simply as either white or not, Greener lost not only his family but also his sense of clarity about race. Richard Greener’s story demonstrates the human realities of racial politics throughout the fight for abolition, the struggle for equal rights, and the backslide into legal segregation. Katherine Reynolds Chaddock has written a long overdue narrative biography about a man, fascinating in his own right, who also exemplified America’s discomfiting perspectives on race and skin color. Uncompromising Activist is a lively tale that will interest anyone curious about the human elements of the equal rights struggle.
Owen Gingerich’s previously unpublished autobiographical sketch of his astronomical education, from his teenage years up through graduate school at Harvard, is presented with an introduction and ...notes by the editors.
After Brown Clotfelter, Charles T
Princeton University Press,
2004, 2004., 20111016, 2011, 2006-00-00, 2004-01-01
eBook, Book
The United States Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, set into motion a process of desegregation that would eventually transform American public schools. This book ...provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of how Brown's most visible effect--contact between students of different racial groups--has changed over the fifty years since the decision.
In 1919, the long-serving director of the Harvard College Observatory died. When the ambitious Harlow Shapley heard the news, although only in his early 30s, he resolved, if possible, to succeed him. ...But a problem emerged: Shapley was enlisted to debate the size of the Galaxy at a Washington meeting, where his opponent would be a noted speaker who was sure to defeat Shapley in front of an audience that included several involved in the Harvard appointment. The article describes the steps Shapley took to avoid or restrict the confrontation, and how in the end Shapley managed to secure the post, in which he became an outstanding success.
The application of photography to astronomy was a critical step in the development of astrophysics at the end of the nineteenth century. Using custom-built photographic telescopes and objective ...prisms, astronomers took images of the sky on glass plates during a 100-year period from many observing stations around the globe. After each plate was developed, astronomers and their assistants studied and annotated the plates as they made astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic measurements, counted galaxies, observed stellar variability, tracked meteors, and calculated the ephemerides of asteroids and comets. In this paper, the authors assess the importance of the plate annotations for future scientific, historical, and educational programmes. Unfortunately, many of these interesting annotations are now being erased when grime is removed from the plates before they are digitized to make the photometric data available for time-domain astrophysics. To see what professional astronomers and historians think about this situation, the authors conducted a survey. This paper captures the lively discussion on the pros and cons of the removal of plate markings, how best to document them if they must be cleaned off, and what to do with plates whose annotations are deemed too valuable to be erased. Three appendices (please visit Supplementary Material, available online) offer professional guidance on the best practices for handling and cleaning the plates, photographing any annotations, and rehousing them.
A review of life expectancies of males in 1905, 1955, and 2005 reveals several striking findings. Life expectancies at birth have increased progressively during this 100-y period. For a man ...graduating in 1905, life expectancy at graduation was actually greater than that at birth. Blacks living into their 70s at that time subsequently had life expectancies that were actually greater than those of their white classmates. The present trend of progressively lengthening life span in all groups reflects the changing pattern of causes of death from formerly untreatable infectious diseases to chronic degenerative disorders. Predictions for the continuing lengthening of the life span of the class of 2005 and succeeding classes may be jeopardized by the alarming increase in obesity, which worsens the incidence of cardiovascular disorders and cancer, the 2 leading causes of death at this time, as well as of diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders, and other categories of disease.
A review of life expectancies of males in 1905, 1955, and 2005 reveals several striking findings. Life expectancies at birth have increased progressively during this 100-y period. For a man ...graduating in 1905, life expectancy at graduation was actually greater than that at birth. Blacks living into their 70s at that time subsequently had life expectancies that were actually greater than those of their white classmates. The present trend of progressively lengthening life span in all groups reflects the changing pattern of causes of death from formerly untreatable infectious diseases to chronic degenerative disorders. Predictions for the continuing lengthening of the life span of the class of 2005 and succeeding classes may be jeopardized by the alarming increase in obesity, which worsens the incidence of cardiovascular disorders and cancer, the 2 leading causes of death at this time, as well as of diabetes, musculoskeletal disorders, and other categories of disease.
During the period between 1870 and 1920, the gross national product of the United States increased more than sixfold, as revolutions in transportation, communications, and manufacturing sparked ...growth in the economy. Large industrial corporations emerged, and their growing power presented grave challenges for social policy, while their wealth enriched an unprecedented number of millionaires and multi-millionaires, whose contributions prompted an enormous increase in philanthropy across the nation. In particular, Andrew Carnegie sold his steel companies for $480,000,000 in 1901 and founded the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1902, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911. Even more prominent, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, “the most famous American of his day,” devoted $447,000,000 to endowing the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in 1901, the General Education Board in 1903, the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial in 1918.
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