Apr 04, 2012
Orfield honored as champion of racial equality in education
Gary Orfield, UCLA distinguished professor of education, law, political science and urban planning, has been selected as one of the 2012 winners of the Dr. John Hope Franklin Award for his achievements as an advocate for racial equality in education, including his work with the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) at UCLA.
Orfield, who currently co-directs the CRP with Education Professor Patricia Gándara, is being honored with the Franklin Award along with Christopher Edley, Jr., co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at UC Berkeley, where he is dean of Berkeley Law. He is also the Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr., Distinguished Chair. Orfield and Edley founded the Civil Rights Project in 1996 when both were professors at Harvard. They were honored at a reception in Los Angeles on March 12.
The Dr. John Hope Franklin Award, which is given by the journal Diverse Issues in Higher Education, is named for the African American scholar, author and professor, who was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University. Franklin is the author of "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans," which was first published in 1947 and is now in its eighth edition.
Orfield, who was once Franklin’s student at the University of Chicago, wrote that his first book, "The Reconstruction of Southern Education: The Schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act," was inspired largely by discussions in Franklin’s courses.
Orfield has been involved in the development of governmental policy on desegregation and has served as an expert witness in numerous cases related to his research, including the University of Michigan Supreme Court case that upheld the policy of affirmative action in 2003. He is a member of the National Review Panel on School Desegregation Research and the American Academy of Arts and Science Task Force on Urban School Desegregation.
