Democratic Merit Initiative
Democratic Merit Project-with support from Public Interest Projects, the Fulfilling the Dream Fund
Consider the traditional admissions process at selective colleges and universities. There has been too much attention focused on looking for predictors of student success based on past achievement. There has been too little attention devoted to looking for ways that our institutions can invest in students based on a commitment to future success. A transformative agenda would move from a reward-based system that rewards individual past achievement to an investment-based system that invests in the broader democratic potential of our society. This investment-based system is called "democratic merit." It is a system that seeks to broaden our agenda and encourages future action to promote the conditions of a thriving democracy. For example, when faculty are hired and students admitted to the academy, democratic merit challenges us to reconsider if it is enough to look only for individuals who have already succeeded. It pushes us to shift our gaze and invest in communities and students whose very success means future success for all.
The Institute is collaborating with Professor Lani Guinier of Harvard University and Professor Cluade Steel of Stanford University on this project. Over the course of this investigation, we will:
- research and document existing innovative affirmative action practices that link the missions of colleges and universities with inclusive democracy
- identify colleges and universities that practice "confirmative action," i.e., assess merit through a more democratic frame
- look for new approaches for monitoring the democratic accountability of admissions decisions
- study alternative ways to link issues of race and class to issues of higher education access
- document affirmative action policies and practices in South Africa and Brazil
Beyond the issue of democratic merit in the academy, this project will also attempt to envision a new framework for thinking about racial justice and to develop a new mechanism to support sustained intellectual collaboration with policy makers and grassroots advocates over time. An assumption of this new conceptual framework is that race is not just a "problem," it is also a tool. Race telegraphs information that otherwise gets buried or ignored; when analyzed and understood in context, this information can inform problem-solving strategies that benefit others, not just people of color. In other words, race helps us understand issues of class and enables us to see both race and class in the context of democracy.
