Lani Guinier Speaks

Harvard professor Lani Guinier raised eyebrows last summer by asking whether the high percentage of West Indian and African immigrants at Harvard showed that the school's affirmative-action policy was leaving African-Americans behind. Guinier, whose father is from Jamaica, explained to Daren Briscoe why schools, not immigrants, are the problem.
What are schools doing wrong?

• Too much of the admissions process is based on multiple-choice tests that measure quick, strategic guessing, and essentially equate wealth and family background with merit. Unfortunately, students who test well get the wrong message, that they've earned the "right" to be admitted as individuals when in fact much of their success comes from investments made by their parents.

Do the schools you criticize see a problem?

• There's a smugness about some elite schools, a sense that they'll get away with the choices they make because they're so selective. But they're still accountable to democratic values, because tax dollars help make them what they are. These schools don't pay property taxes, they get enormous federal grants and many students pay their tuition with federal loans.

The problem isn't limited to black students.

• Poor rural whites and urban blacks are being left behind, but nobody is looking at the white student body and saying, "Look who's missing." [more]
• SAT shouldn't be the only measure of qualified students [more]