Guest Lecturers Probe Education and Social Justice

Two leading scholars studying the intersection of civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity will offer a pair of talks on Wednesday, March 23, as part of the Henkels Lecture Series, hosted by Notre Dame’s Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO).

The scholars of education, Patricia Gándara and Gary Orfield, are co-directors of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, an initiative at UCLA.

Orfield, who was also co-founder and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, will speak at 10:30-noon on the topic, “The Great Civil Rights Reversal: The Conservative Counterrevolution and Social Justice in American Education.” Orfield is a UCLA professor of education, law, political science, and urban planning.

Gándara is a professor of education in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. She will speak at 1:30-3:00 on the topic, “Will We All Be Arizona? Horne vs. Flores and the Future of Language Policy in the United States.” Gándara’s previous positions include the California state Commissioner for Postsecondary Education, the director of education research in the California legislature, and a bilingual psychologist.

The talks are open to the public free of charge and will take place in the auditorium of Notre Dame’s Eck Visitors Center.

The host for the talks is Bill Carbonaro, associate director of CREO and director of graduate studies in the Sociology Department.

CREO is a unit of the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI), whose research advances Notre Dame’s commitment to the future of schools, with special attention to disadvantaged youth. CREO is directed by Notre Dame sociology professor Mark Berends, a leading scholar and author in the field of educational opportunity.