Program Reports

As part of two symposia organized in 2009 and 2010, the French-American Foundation addressed the heated issue of the characterization of immigration and immigrants in the North American and European media. The participants of the symposia – prominent North American and European reporters, scholars and other immigration experts – gathered in Paris and Miami to discuss this topic as well as to examine best practices. This report presents the highlights of the discussions and provides a series of key takeaways and recommendations.

In this paper, Professor Richard Ford (Stanford Law School) argues that the American experience with civil rights – requiring the accommodation of distinctive group practices and cultural affections – largely vindicates France’s concerns over the recent headscarf controversy.

On April 8-10, 2010, a group of U.S. and French military officials and civilian policymakers and analysts gathered outside Paris for the 10th French-American Defense Symposium. The conference provided a forum for the exchange of ideas about the nature of the security challenge in Africa in the twenty-first century, an opportunity to share information on current strategies of engagement, and a chance to explore areas for more effective cooperation between the United States and France. This report lays out the main themes that emerged during the discussions.

The report, “Les Français musulmans sont-ils discriminés dans leur propre pays? Une étude expérimentale sur le marché du travail,” describes the research conducted in 2009 by Stanford Professor, David D. Laitin, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with French research firm, ISM-CORUM.

In this report, Patricia Gándara and Gary Orfield argue that the basic mechanism of U.S. racial subordination today is neither violence and subjugation nor state-imposed racial controls; it is a system of residential separation linked to highly segregated and unequal schooling that is seen by most Americans as a system of private choices about housing through market mechanisms but which looks very different to many families of color.

With 40 years of experience in antidiscrimination law and affirmative action, the United States constitutes a major point of reference for French policy-makers. Whether perceived positively or negatively, the American example can certainly make a significant contribution to the French debate on how to best foster equal opportunity. Moreover, examining the American antidiscrimination framework is particularly timely as France has just adopted European-level directives that require developing tools for identifying and combating all forms of discrimination, especially indirect discrimination.

While direct discrimination is usually understood as deliberate action expressing a conscious intent to discriminate, the reviewed research within this report by Linda Hamilton Krieger demonstrates that discrimination can also result from the unintentional, unconscious application of gender, racial, ethnic and other stereotypes that people – even well intentioned ones – absorb from their cultural environment.   These more subtle forms of discrimination occur because stereotypes function not only as consciously held beliefs about social groups, but also as deep mental structures that unknowi

In 2007, the French-American Foundation’s Equality of Opportunity program developed a major initiative focusing on education.  This project stemmed from a concern that applies to the educational systems in both countries:  the under-representation of students from racial-ethnic minorities or recent immigrant backgrounds in higher education institutions, particularly the most selective schools, called grandes écolesin France.

France and the United States face a common challenge in the educational sector: the necessary democratization in access to selective higher education. To confront this issue, both countries have put in place affirmative action strategies in order to promote equal opportunity and combat various forms of educational segregation, whether social, ethnic or territorial. Even if these strategies have been historically very distinct in nature, some present commonalities nonetheless, namely in that they privilege social and geographic criteria in the drafting of public policies.

This comprehensive report of the French-American Foundation Equality of Opportunity Program’s activities was the first of its kind published. Written by Shanny Peer, then Director of the French-American Foundation, the report is primarily a comprehensive brief of the policy discussions held during the Inaugural Program Seminar held at NYU in November 2006.

In 2004, the French-American Foundation co-sponsored a colloquium on French health care, resulting in this essay collection by Victor Rodwin.

About the principal author (at the time of publication, 2006): Victor G. Rodwin is Professor of Health Policy and Management, Wagner School, New York University and Director of the World Cities Project, International Longevity Center - USA. He has served as a consultant, in France, to the NHI Funds, public and private hospital associations, and has published widely on different aspects of the French health care system.

In 2002, the Foundation began to focus on French priority education policy (known as ZEP policy for zone d’éducation prioritaire). This policy entails the investment of additional resources in schools serving disadvantaged student populations. A kind of affirmative action à la française, ZEP policy aims to “give more to those who have less” within a universal, national education system.

Following the successful model of the Foundation’s previous programs on Child Care and Maternal and Child Health, the French-American Foundation selected a distinguished team of 15 Americans experts on early childhood education and sent them on a study tour to France in January 1999. The team was composed of leading voices in the area of early education and key U.S. decision makers.