Wednesday, April 26, 2023

April 26, 2023: Recent Scholarly Books: Natasha Warikoo on Education

[Writing about Kidada Williams’ new book a couple weeks back reminded me that it’s been too long since I’ve focused a series on new scholarship. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of great recent books—add your nominations for a crowd-sourced Friday post (ahead of the monthly recap on the weekend), please!]

A couple years back (man, nothing like blog posts to remind you how fast time flies) I wrote a post highlighting my fellow SSN Boston Chapter co-leaders, including Natasha Warikoo. I highlighted there one of Natasha’s 2022 books, Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools; she also published a second book (!) in 2022, Is Affirmative Action Fair?: The Myth of Equity in College Admissions. Both of those built on her 2016 book The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions, and Meritocracy at Elite Universities. To be clear, here in 2023 the most pressing issues facing higher ed and education overall are the sustained assaults on those institutions and systems from overt adversaries and their bullshit narratives, and defending American education from them has to be job one for all of us. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other, much more complicated questions facing higher ed, including those around admissions and diversity and equity that Natasha has spent her career writing about with as much thoughtful nuance as any scholar. All those books of hers are well worth checking out as we seek to advance that conversation!

Last scholarly highlight tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other scholarly books or work you’d highlight?

PPS. For a lot more—I mean a lot more—great recent books, check out that section of all my #ScholarSunday threads!

No comments:

Post a Comment