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The aim of this paper is to bring together concepts and commitments from both liberal and queer theories with the purpose of designing an integrated framework for equity-focused education policy analysis and implementation. In essence, we aim to build a conceptual bridge between queer and liberal democratic theories and to develop what we call a "queer democratic framework" for policy analysis and implementation. We use the case of the Fair Accurate Inclusive and Respectful Education Act (FAIR) throughout this paper as an exemplar of how queer policy analysis and implementation change the terms of the policy discussion. We argue that as an example of a policy that comes out of liberal democratic theory, FAIR can only go so far. It is symbolic and positive, but cannot reach emancipatory aims in practice without queer analysis and implementation.

Anticipating the deleterious effects of pandemic mitigation protocols on faculty's research and creative work, many universities introduced mechanisms for pre-tenured faculty to receive tenure clock extensions. Unlike most stop-the-clock extensions, which occur on an individual basis, the stop-the-tenure-clock during COVID-19 was a mass-triggering event that applied to all faculty. Informed by social role theory, we examined this unique situation of stop-the-tenure clock decisions by faculty at two different universities within the same state system. Institutional level demographic and field of study data on faculty decision making at one high research activity university (n = 97) and one very high research activity university (n = 387) were examined at two time points; a first tenure-clock stop opportunity and a second tenure-clock stop opportunity. Results show that although the overall rates of clock-stops were much larger at the research-intense university, the characteristics of who was most likely to accept or opt out of the first tenure-clock stop were similar at both universities. Ethnic minoritized faculty at both universities had greater odds of accepting the clock-stop. Results also showed that at both universities, women were somewhat more likely to accept the first tenure clock extension, and exploratory follow-up shows this gendered decision manifested differently depending on field of study. Relatively few faculty accepted the second tenure clock-stop. Our findings provide a portrait of who accepts or declines tenure clock extensions with important implications for downstream effects on equity within the academy.

Despite the marginal success that anti-affirmative action groups have had at paring back the use of race in college admissions practices, affirmative action has remained largely in-tact as a tool to promote diversity on college campuses. But what might happen if "diversity"--the very thing that heretofore has protected affirmative action--was used instead as proof of its supposed unfairness? In this paper, focusing on the "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard" case, we will employ Political Spectacle Theory to analyze the strategies and tactics used by the anti-affirmative action groups to distract from their real aims and to divert focus away from mitigating structural inequality.

Reflecting a larger context of profound political polarization, controversies and protests around campus speakers have exposed deep social fractures, highlighting an important normative question for campus leaders and educators: how should we make decisions about what views are reasonable and thus merit debate on campus? Although it may be received wisdom that institutions of higher learning in a democratic society are obligated to provide forums for the unfettered, open exchange of ideas, that sense is built on the assumption that the ideas put forward for consideration are reasonable and defensible. Should any and all perspectives always be up for debate? Must campus communities provide forums for viewpoints that democratic societies regard as patently untrue or beyond the pale of what is right and good? In this article, I make the case that, because their missions center discovery and knowledge production, grounded in academic freedom, colleges and universities are far from spaces where anything goes. Valuing free speech does not have to come at the expense of students' and faculty members' pursuit of knowledge and truth, a (some might say "the") fundamental mission of higher education. Campus speech controversies are not only--or even primarily--about free speech, I argue, but about knowledge and truth.

Scholars in distinct academic disciplines may examine the same or similar phenomena, often relying on concepts that are well known within each discipline. In this article, we examine two related sociological concepts--capital and adaptive preferences--each used to explain young people's choices and aspirations. We make the case that integrating the philosophical concept of the "social context of choice" into analyses using "capital" or "adaptive preferences" provides an interdisciplinary approach to analyses of underrepresented students' educational choices and aspirations in higher education, beyond what each concept provides alone. We ground our philosophical examination in data from a 2-year empirical study of an educational access and outreach program for low-income students.

In this essay, Michele Moses and Terri Wilson explore the recent movement to opt out of state tests. They situate this activism within a diverse line of efforts to refuse aspects of public education, asking how to evaluate the democratic legitimacy of different kinds of refusal in public education. Drawing on specific examples of opting out, they point to different ethical principles at stake in conflicts over public education. They pose three sets of questions -- emphasizing reasons, positionality, and consequences -- to help guide local educational leaders, policymakers, and citizens in negotiating difficult cases of refusal in public education. Moses and Wilson conclude that opting out of tests may, under certain conditions, serve the public purposes of education in a democratic society. Although many opt-out activists justify their actions in terms of individual rights, others are concerned with public goals and ideals, including concerns about the narrowing of curriculum, the erosion of teacher authority, and the widening privatization of public education. Yet communicating across and between different interests in this movement remains a challenge, one that points to the need for spaces of democratic deliberation about the aims of education policy.

This article uses philosophical analysis to clarify the arguments and claims about racial discrimination brought forward in the recent legal challenges to affirmative action in higher education admissions. Affirmative action opponents have argued that elite institutions of higher education are using negative action against Asian American applicants, so they can admit other students of color instead by using race-conscious affirmative action. We examined the surrounding controversy, while positing that the portrayal of Asian Americans as a model minority in this debate foments a politics of resentment that divides racial groups. Our analysis centered on how key concepts such as racial discrimination and diversity may be central to this politics of resentment. Given persistent threats to access and equity in higher education, it is important to gain conceptual clarity about the racial politics of anti-affirmative action efforts.

In this article we examine the current status of affirmative action in postsecondary admissions through a concurrent review of recent court rulings, state legislation, and higher education enrollment data. Analyzing each of these factors in the context of the others is important because the court decisions and state-level legislation interact to affect enrollment. We not only present the state of the law, but also examine several outcomes of affirmative action case law and ballot initiatives as well as political implications for the future of affirmative action. From a broad philosophical and legal perspective, then, we ask first, what is the current legal and political status of race-conscious policy in higher education admissions? And second, given that current status, what is the likelihood that by 2028 affirmative action will no longer be needed to further the goals of diversity and equality on college and university campuses? Our methods include analyses of prominent court decisions and state legislation, as well as analyses of enrollment data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System to examine the racial/ethnic diversity of first-time, degree-seeking undergraduates at several state flagship institutions from 1994 to 2005 and compare that to the racial/ethnic diversity of the same undergraduate students attending all 2- and 4-year degree granting public and private institutions in the flagship's state. In states potentially facing anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives, these analyses provide one approach to examining the current need for affirmative action in admissions and the likely consequences if the ballot initiatives pass. (Contains 10 figures and 27 footnotes.)

This multivocal essay engages complex ethical issues raised in collaborative community-based research (CCBR). It critiques the fraught history and limiting conditions of current ethics codes and review processes, and engages persistent troubling questions about the ethicality of research practices and universities themselves. It cautions against positioning CCBR as a corrective that fully escapes these issues. The authors draw from a range of philosophic, African-centric, feminist, decolonial, Indigenous, and other critical theories to unsettle research ethics. Contributors point toward research ethics as a praxis of engagement with aggrieved communities in healing from and redressing historical trauma.

In recent years, diverse actors around the world have protested the growing dominance of standardised testing in education policy and practice, citing racial equity as one reason, among many, to oppose standardised tests. Education activists have also argued, on the other hand, that standardised assessments can be used to bring attention to systemic racial inequities. This study explores these dynamics in a United States context, asking, 'In what ways was race discussed, and not discussed, in conversations among opt-out activists, and what were the potential consequences of such references and omissions?' We focus on a small-group dialogue of White opt-out activists (activists protesting standardised tests) in order to explore how a 'color-evasive' ideology operates through discourse. Findings from this study suggest that there are ways in which the topic of race was elided in the opt-out movement and that elisions, or silences, around race can be contagious in White-majority spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project we highlight in this article stems from our philosophical work on moral disagreements that appear to be--and sometimes are--intractable. Deliberative democratic theorists tout the merits of dialogue as an effective way to bridge differences of values and opinion, ideally resulting in agreement, or perhaps more often resulting in greater mutual understanding. Could dialogue mitigate disagreements about a controversial education policy such as affirmative action? Could it foster greater understanding? We conceived of a project that would simultaneously fulfill two goals that we had as philosophers, education researchers, and aspiring public intellectuals. First, it would allow us to use philosophy in research, grounding our mixed methods research in a philosophically informed framework. The tools and analytic techniques that are particular to philosophers felt uniquely suited for an empirical study concerning political theory. Second, we aimed to use philosophy in the community. We were able to put our own expertise in philosophy and race-conscious education policy to good use by purposefully creating opportunities for diverse community members in our larger metropolitan area to engage in dialogue and deliberation with each other over the issue of affirmative action.

In this article, Amy N. Farley, Matthew N. Gaertner, and Michele S. Moses examine the use of ballot initiatives as a particularly attractive form of direct democracy for opponents of affirmative action in higher education. Building on previous scholarship, the authors question whether anti-affirmative ballot initiatives validly reflect voters' attitudes toward affirmative action. The authors examine the case of Colorado's Amendment 46, an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative. They investigate the language of the initiative itself, as well as voters' perceptions of and confusion around its intent, and the factors that influenced voting behavior. They employ item response theory to estimate voters' attitudes toward affirmative action. The authors then describe the prevalence of voter confusion around the initiative's intent. Finally, employing a binary logistic regression model, they analyze survey data to determine which factors influenced voting behavior. They find that the initiative's language was successful at confusing voters who intended to support affirmative action. Following the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in "Fisher v. University of Texas" and in anticipation of its decision in "Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action," the authors call for greater scrutiny with regard to the use of initiatives to craft education policies that have a disproportionately negative impact on members of disadvantaged populations.

This chapter examines the following central question: How do direct democratic ballot initiatives affect the public good? A second, related question is this: When voters collectively make policy decisions, what responsibilities do researchers have to contribute to informing public deliberation about the relevant issues? In an attempt to answer these questions, the authors investigate how the direct democratic ballot initiative process, increasingly--and controversially--used to allow citizens to make education policy decisions, may serve to enhance or constrain the public good. The education policies affected by ballot initiatives, such as affirmative action and bilingual education, often concern issues of race, civil rights, and equality of educational opportunity. This analysis relies on political philosophy through the lens of deliberative democratic theory, relying in particular on the work of Amy Gutmann and Iris Marion Young. The more theoretical analyses are grounded in data from a recent empirical study on whether deliberative community dialogues on race-conscious policy issues serve to inform the dialogue participants. The aims of this chapter are to provide greater understanding of the education-policy-by-ballot-initiative phenomenon, bring to light the possibilities of "tyranny of the majority" when policies having to do with civil rights are left up to popular vote, and make the case that researchers ought to use their expertise in the service of public information and deliberation and, ultimately, the public good. (Contains 7 notes.)

This study investigated the relevance of participants' social group differences with regard to the processes and outcomes of community dialogues on affirmative action. We found that participants' professional status was most salient to both the quantity of participants' contributions as well as their persuasiveness within the dialogues, with participants' race and gender also being potential factors. Participants across all social groups used the communicative strategy of argument as well as other forms of discourse that Young (2000) identified: greeting, rhetoric, and narrative. Our findings counter the assumption that communicative styles vary systematically by social group and suggest the need for research into the ways in which political equality can be fostered in deliberative dialogues in addition to the inclusion of multiple forms of discourse. (Contains 13 notes and 4 tables.)

This article explores how race-conscious education policy is interpreted in the political landscape of a "postracial" America. Based on a qualitative media analysis of the press coverage surrounding Amendment 46, an antiaffirmative action initiative, we examine language, statistics, and messages leveraged by advocates and critics of the ballot measure. We argue that despite using some of the same data sources, terms, and concepts, proponents and opponents of Amendment 46 proposed divergent policies. We analyzed this phenomenon vis-a-vis the framework of conflicting racial projects (Omi & Winant, 1994), moral paradigms of race (Loury, 2002), and interpretations of equality of educational opportunity (Howe, 1997). Arguably, the public's understanding of race-conscious education policies relies in part on opportunities for researchers, journalists, and the public to deliberate about issues related to race. We conclude with some recommendations for fostering more communication and understanding based in deliberative democratic theory (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996, 2004). (Contains 1 figure, 4 tables, and 3 footnotes.)

Are direct democratic ballot initiatives a just way to make education policy, especially when the policy disproportionately affects members of underrepresented groups? This is the broad question taken up in this article, related in particular to how education policy decided through the ballot initiative process affects minorities. The authors use philosophical inquiry to examine the fairness of education policy decisions being made by voters via the ballot initiative process. The primary purpose of this article is to shed light on an underexamined issue within education policy analysis, the phenomenon of education-related initiatives that focus on dismantling historic civil rights policies. (Contains 5 notes.)

This article offers a qualitative content analysis of the print news media coverage of Proposal 2, an anti-affirmative action ballot initiative that passed on November 7, 2006. Our purpose was to determine what type of information on the initiative and affirmative action was available to the public. Results indicate that little substantive information to inform voters appeared in the print news. We argue that an inclusive and deliberative democracy requires education researchers to link with media sources to provide citizens with rich, research-based information on education policy issues. Similar initiatives were debated in five states during the fall of 2008, and others are slated for the 2010 ballot, which suggests an urgent need for timely contributions from researchers and media sources alike.

The author's primary aims are to clarify the differing rationales for affirmative action that have emerged in five nations--France, India, South Africa, the United States, and Brazil--and to make the case for the most compelling rationales, whether instrumentally or morally based. She examines the different social contexts surrounding the establishment and public discussion of each nation's policy. Next, she examines four justifications for affirmative action in these nations: remediation, economics, diversity, and social justice. She offers philosophical analysis of the justifications for affirmative action in each country and synthesizes federal and state legislation, court decisions, news media sources, and research-based scholarship. She argues that the social justice rationale ought to be invoked more centrally, underscoring affirmative action's role in fostering a democratic society. (Contains 3 tables and 14 notes.)

In this article, Michele Moses and Lauren Saenz explore a growing trend in education policymaking--the ballot initiative. Specifically, the authors question whether information presented to voters is sufficiently substantive to permit educated decisionmaking about influential policies. Their study, a content analysis of print news media related to the 2006 Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, shows that coverage of this initiative was largely superficial, documenting procedural or topical matters rather than addressing the deeper moral, practical, and historical issues involved. These results, they argue, highlight the important role that mass media should play in a direct democracy, currently an overlooked responsibility. Moses and Saenz end with an appeal to education researchers to monitor the media coverage of education policy debates and, upon finding insubstantial coverage, to present an alternative that is meaningful and accessible to the general public. (Contains 5 tables and 9 notes.)

This article explores the connections between the media's responsibility to educate the public, politically and morally contested education policy debates, and public information and deliberation. The author argues that it is crucial for education policy researchers to clarify the competing perspectives on policy disputes by providing theory and research-based information to the public. This requires researchers to understand not only the nuances of the policy issue but also how the media serve as educators and how to find ways of disseminating research to journalists and members of the public.

This article concerns an issue that often remains implicit within the public debate about affirmative action and related race-conscious education policies: What role do contested moral ideals play in the disagreement about affirmative action? As background, the article first outlines what a moral disagreement is and then goes on to examine the roots of the disagreement about affirmative action. A case is made for the importance of illuminating and understanding the moral disagreement about affirmative action to inform the public deliberation about related race-conscious education policies, especially given that affirmative action policies are being challenged once again in the public political arena. (Contains 3 notes.)

Is it possible and desirable to transcend ideological perspectives within educational policy research and decision making? If so, what would it entail and how should we proceed? At heart, the relation among research, ideology, and policy may be characterized as a complex and interconnected web. The common view of this web is that good social and educational policy decisions are generally made based on research evidence and largely independent of ideological positions. However, it is rather more likely that research and political ideology interact throughout the research process, from the choice of research question, to the organization that provides funding for the research, to the way that findings are interpreted and used. The purpose of this article is to propose a promising strategy that can be utilized by policymakers in the process of making educational policy decisions.

Criticisms against bilingual education policy are myopic and focus on nostalgic notions of Americanization and assimilation. Bilingual education supports heritage-language students' cultural identities and expands their contexts of choice, thus developing their self-determination and preparing them to participate in democracy. Federal policies requiring bilingual education to be offered to heritage-language students should be maintained. (Contains 46 references.) (TD)