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Gary Orfield is professor of education and co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. He is an expert on education policy, urban policy, minority opportunity and civil rights. His central interest has been the development and implementation of social policy — with a central focus on the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American education and society.
Gary Orfield
Gary Orfield is professor of education and co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. He is an expert on education policy, urban policy, minority opportunity and civil rights. His central interest has been the development and implementation of social policy — with a central focus on the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American education and society.A prolific author in several disciplines, Orfield publishes and comments frequently on issues involving civil rights and social policy, school resegregration, high school drop-out rates, educational equity and access, education achievement gaps, and educational reform. He has served as an expert witness in many high-profile legal cases having to do with access to education and civil rights law and has written extensively on the national progress of school desegregation in the U.S. over the last three decades.
Adding more substance to the national discussion
September 09, 2008
It is amazing to me how in the past week the discussion of electing our new president has shifted from a debate about how we are going to solve a set of enormous challenges to one about how interesting and feisty the new VP nominee from Alaska was...
Candidates should tackle Iraq war, international affairs, migration
September 23, 2008
As the first presidential debate nears, I hope that the foreign policy discussion goes to fundamental issues. On the war, McCain has tried to frame it as a debate about who was right on the military surge. We really need a debate on the entire iss...
Bill Ayers and the guilt-by-association tactic
October 10, 2008
When I was a Professor of Political Science and Education at the University of Chicago I lived in the Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood where Ayers and Barak Obama live and I was very familiar with school reform movements in Chicago and served on man...
Obama and the Lessons of the Crisis
October 15, 2008
Presidents often shape their legacy in responding to crises. The truth is that Presidents in normal situations don't have great latitude to make major changes since power is shared with Congress and other institutions and policy-making involves de...
Socialism?
October 21, 2008
The McCain campaign is now accusing Sen. Obama of advocating socialism. Socialism, of course, is a policy of public ownership of the means of production. There is nothing about the Obama tax policies that have any relationship to socialism, so thi...
Dirt and the campaign
October 21, 2008
The walk to the White House isn't a primrose path. Your opponents do not give up their dream of occupying the most powerful office in the world and turning history in a new direction without a fight. If they can't win fairly, they are surrounded b...
After the celebrations
November 01, 2008
This is a period of very intense expectancy and fear that something will go wrong among supporters of Barak Obama’s remarkable campaign--fear that the possible victory will somehow be snatched away, that Democrats always lose the close ones, that ...