沃尔特·艾伦71年的《维持现状
But Allen was fortunate that when he graduated high school in 1967, times were changing. The National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students took African-American students who did well on their national achievement tests and matched them with colleges looking to increase their tiny—or nonexistent—percentage of black students.
对艾伦来说，这只是个开始, who calls himself “a member of the pioneer generation of black ‘shock troops.我乘着“第一”的浪潮进入了一个杰出的学术生涯.”
Allen decided to attend 贝洛伊特 because he had visited Wisconsin once before and liked it, “but I was there in August and it didn’t dawn on me that January would come.” Allen’s first plan was to study marine biology—a plan that “crashed on the shores of biochemistry,他挖苦地写道. “I came from a very weak academic background and was put in a very tough academic schedule. 我也踢足球，有一份全职工作. 第一学期，我绊倒得很严重.”
他通过了生物化学考试, 但几乎没有表现出他的坚持, 他在大四的时候重修了这门课，得了A -). Then he enrolled in a class taught by Blake Hill, “a brilliant young teacher. She recognized something in me, cultivated me, and I was swept up 在社会学.”
在一些重要教授的帮助下, Allen applied to and got into the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. 在社会学. After stints at the University of North Carolina and the University of Michigan, he joined UCLA’s sociology department in 1988 and is now the Allan Murray Cartter Professor of Higher Education in the Graduate School of Education & 信息研究.
这是他所有研究的主题, 他说, is to demonstrate and combat the separate and unequal segregation that is embedded in America—from the hospital one is born in to the education opportunities to the cleanliness and safety of neighborhoods.
“My entire career has been about documenting that these issues are real,他说.
Allen is quick to say that this country has evolved since he was a boy—and certainly since his parents worked as sharecroppers in the South.
“I absolutely celebrate the changes we’ve made in overcoming prejudices regarding race, 种族, 和性别,他说. “但我们还有很长的路要走.”
One of Allen’s major undertakings is the 1998 establishment of The Choices Project, 一项研究计划. The project examines how California’s African-American and Latino students, 历史上哪些国家的大学出勤率和毕业率都很低, 在教育的关键过渡阶段是否受到影响.
The project focuses on creating a college-going culture through elementary and secondary school; basic information for high schoolers about what college is and represents; identification of the individual, 家庭, and institutional characteristics that ensure most of these students have a successful college experience; and better access for African Americans and Latinos to graduate schools in law, 医学, 以及其他学科.
Some of Allen’s most notable work has been focused on diversity in law schools. A year after the landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision which upheld the affirmative action admissions policy at the University of Michigan Law School—a case in which Allen testified as an expert—he and three colleagues from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill formed the Educational Diversity Project. 第一步是收集大约8个国家的数据,000 students at 68 law schools and conduct interviews with law professors.
They also held focus groups with a subset of the participants and in 2007, 当班级毕业的时候, they did a follow-up survey and conducted interviews with law professors.
他们发现，“多样性在很大程度上很重要，”艾伦说. “我们有黑字法律, 但是当你开始讨论个体时, and bringing context and interpretation and perspectives of human beings in the mix, 把多样性带到谈判桌上变得更加重要.”
这似乎是常识, 但正如艾伦所说, “社会科学很重要，因为我们有经验证据. 这不仅仅是观点的问题.”
更多异质法学院, 他说, made differences in everything from the professions lawyers chose—public interest over corporate law, 例如，律师事务所的选择.
The project is looking for additional funding for a 10-year follow-up to see if the impact of diversity has continued.
最近, 艾伦将他的工作扩展到了一个看似不寻常的领域, 而是从他的潜在担忧——种族——中自然演化出来的, 正义, 与平等. 他是中非生物多样性联盟的成员, 与生态学家合作, 环境科学家, and evolutionary biologists to preserve tropical forests while also saving the way of life “of people nearby who have a long historical relationship with the land,他说. “如果你宣布它是保护区，禁止进入, where will the people get the game meat to supplement their meager diets? 如果你禁止进入祖先的墓地会发生什么?”
The organization is in its third year of a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation.
除了他的研究, Allen points with pride to his teaching and training of undergraduates and graduate students who continue and expand on his work. 他在研究和教学方面获得了许多奖项.
“All my experiences at 贝洛伊特 bridge to what I do now—the progressive social change orientation, 跨领域工作, and a clear sense that the work should have relevance in the real world,他说.
While acknowledging that “we are in a very problematic period in terms of inequality,他也知道变化的本质是潮起潮落.
“When you challenge power, privilege, and the status quo,他说, “the status quo will fight back.”
Alina Tugend是纽约的一名自由撰稿人.
