“Equality of Opportunity in Education and Employment:

French and American Perspectives”

French-American Foundation Inaugural Program Seminar

New York , November 13-14, 2006

Valerie Amiraux, Research Fellow in Sociology, CNRS/European University Institute

 Valérie Amiraux holds a doctorate in political science from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and is the author of Acteurs de l’islam entre Allemagne et Turquie: parcours militants et expériences religieuses (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001). Her present research interests focus on the production of discourses on Islam and on the political and legal regulation of religious pluralism in Western Europe ( Great Britain , Italy , Germany , France ). She currently holds the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies in Florence and is working on a book project entitled Religious Discrimination of Muslims in the European Union: Experience of Injustice, Fight for recognition, and Implementation of Equality in a Plural Society. She has recently co-edited [with Gerdien Jonker] Politics of Visibility: Young Muslims in European Public Spaces, New Brunswick , Transaction, 2006.

Alison R. Bernstein, Vice President, Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program, The Ford Foundation. 

            Alison R. Bernstein graduated from Vassar College , and received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in history from Columbia University . She has taught at Princeton University , the University of Illinois , Springfield , and the College of Staten Island , City University of New York.

In 1996, she became Vice President of the Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program, one of the three program divisions of the Ford Foundation. In this position, she has been responsible for the direction, conduct and evaluation of the Foundation’s work in the United States and internationally in the fields of education and scholarship, arts and culture, media, religion and sexuality.

            A former Associate Dean of Faculty at Princeton University, Alison R. Bernstein is the author of several books: Bringing Equity Back: Research for a New Era in American Educational Policy [with Janice Petrovitch and Amy Stuart Wells] (New York, Teachers College Press, 2005); Melting Pots and Rainbow Nations: Conversations about Difference in the United States and South Africa [with Jacklyn Cock] (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2002); American Indians and World War II: Toward a New Era in Indian Affairs (University of Oklahoma Press 1991; paperback 1999).

            A former trustee of Vassar College , and member of the Presidential Advisory Board on Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alison R. Bernstein is currently a Contributing Editor to Change Magazine, and serves on the Board of Project Pericles and the International Fellowships Fund, sponsored by the Institute of International Education .

Jacqueline A. Berrien, Associate Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

            Jacqueline A. Berrien received her B.A. with High Honors from Oberlin College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School (1986), where she served as a general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

            Ms. Berrien first worked as a staff attorney with the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and with the American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project and National Legal Department (1987-94). She then became an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), where she directed LDF’s work in the area of voting rights and political participation, and represented African American voters in the U.S. Supreme Court and federal and state trial and appellate courts (1994-2001). Between 2001 and 2004, Berrien was a program officer in the Governance and Civil Society Unit of the Ford Foundation’s Peace and Social Justice Program, where she administered more than $13 million in grants to advance political equality in the U.S. and promote increased political participation by people of color, young people and women.

She became Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. in 2004. In this position, she assists LDF’s Director-Counsel and President, Theodore M. Shaw, with programmatic oversight and general management of the NAACP.

Jacqueline A. Berrien is also an adjunct professor at New York Law School , where she teaches a course entitled “Blacks and American Law,” and has taught trial advocacy at Harvard and Fordham law schools.

Alfred W. Blumrosen, Thomas Cowan Professor of Law Emeritus, Rutgers University

            Professor Blumrosen has B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Michigan . A labor arbitrator, he was chief of conciliation, U.S. States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1965-1967, and special attorney, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, in 1968. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and state and city civil rights agencies.  He is the author of Modern Law: The Law Transmission System and Equal Employment Opportunity (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993) and Black Employment and the Law (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1971).  From 1977 to 1979, he consulted with  EEOC Chair Eleanor Holmes Norton  concerning agency reorganization, job selection procedures, and affirmative action guidelines. In 1993, as a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa , he examined whether U.S. experience with equal employment programs would be useful in the post-apartheid period. In 1995, Professor Blumrosen advised the U.S. Labor Department concerning the program requiring government contractors to take affirmative action for minorities and women.   In 2002, he and his late wife Ruth published a Ford Foundation funded study of The Reality of Intentional Job Discrimination in Metropolitan America-1999 available at eeo-1.com and http://law.newark.rutgers.edu/faculty_emeritus.html, a statistical analysis of employer reports on the composition of their workforce, combined with legal standards to identify intentional job discrimination.  In 2005, they published Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the American Revolution. (Naperville, Illinois, Sourcebooks, Inc.).* [1]

Eric Cédiey, Political Scientist, President of ECCE

            Trained as a sociologist and an economist, Éric Cédiey also did research in political science, on the making of Employment Equity and Black Economic Empowerment policies in South  Africa . He has first worked for the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. He has written on affirmative action in South Africa , is an associate editor of Safundi, the Journal of South African and American Studies, and is now often consulted on employment equity issues in France . In 1999-2001, Éric Cédiey was the scientific advisor of a French NGO program with public funding: “Specific actions for equal opportunities at work.” In 2002 he founded ECCE, a private consultancy offering training and auditing on discrimination issues and on corporate social responsibility. Since 2004, he is working for the NGO consultancy ISM-Corum, notably acting as an expert on several European EQUAL programs, with such employers as the Adecco and ClubMed companies, the Casino and FranceTélévisions groups, the Cities of Lyon and Grenoble , the Rhône-Alpes Regional Council, and with all the French trade union confederations. In 2006, Éric Cédiey has been the scientific director of a wide situation testing study conducted in France for the International Labour Office and the French Ministry of Labour. His publications include: “Getting Equality to Work. The South African Employment Equity Act”, The Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies (1, 2001); “Comment l’affirmative action vint à l’Afrique du Sud” (abstract in English: “How Affirmative Action Came to South Africa”), Critique internationale (17, 2002); Discriminations “raciales” et politiques antidiscriminatoires, Greater Lyon Authorities, June 2003; Un diagnostic partagé sur les discriminations liées à l’origine et au sexe, the Casino Group and ISM-Corum, May 2005; Racial Discrimination in Access to Employment in France. A Study by Situation Testing, International Labour Office, forthcoming.* [1]

Dalton Conley, Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at New York University

Dalton Conley holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University . He is Professor and Chair of Sociology at New York University and former director of NYU’s Center for Advanced Social Science Research.  He is also an Adjunct Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the Department of Community Medicine, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.  In 2005, Dalton Conley became the first sociologist to win the National Science Foundation's prestigious Alan T. Waterman Award.  He also received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigators Award in Health Policy Research (2000-2003) and the American Sociological Association Award for Best Dissertation in the Field, 1997. His research focuses on how socio-economic status is transmitted across generations and on the public policies that affect that process. In this vein, he studies sibling differences in socioeconomic success; racial inequalities; the measurement of class and social status; and how health and biology affect (and are affected by) social position. His publications include Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999), The Starting Gate: Birth Weight and Life Chances ( Berkeley , University of California Press , 2003) and Honky ( Berkeley , University of California Press , 2000).* [1]

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School

            Kimberlé Crenshaw received her B.A. from Cornell University and her J.D. from Harvard.  At UCLA she was elected Professor of the Year by the 1991 and 1994 graduating classes. She currently teaches Civil Rights and other courses in critical race studies and constitutional law.  Her publications include the edited volume Critical Race Theory (New York, Free Press, 1995) and many articles published in the Harvard Law Review, the National Black Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, and the Southern California Law Review. Professor Crenshaw has used her legal expertise and scholarship on race and the law, and issues of “intersectionality” between race and gender to serve as an organizer and advocate for issues concerning black people and women globally.  She is currently an Ira Glasser Racial Justice Fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union (2004-2006). Professor Crenshaw was a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at PUC-Rio in 2007, and was the Convenor at the Bellagio Conference on Globalizing Affirmative Action in August 2007. She is the Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum and Convenor of the Affirmative Action Research and Policy Consortium, an AAPF project.* [1]

Éric Fassin, Sociologist, École Normale Supérieure

            Éric Fassin is a sociologist whose work has focused mostly on race and gender issues in the United States and France . A professeur agrégé, he teaches social sciences at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and from 1989 to 1994 was assistant director of the Institute of French Studies at New York University . His publications include L’Inversion de la question homosexuelle. Une politique démocratique de la sexualité, Paris, Amsterdam, 2005,  and [with Clarisse Fabre] Liberté, égalité, sexualités. Actualité politique des questions sexuelles (Paris, 10/18, second enlarged edition 2004), as well as two edited volumes : Daniel Borrillo, Éric Fassin and Marcela Iacub (eds), Au-delà du PACS : l’expertise familiale à l’épreuve de l’homosexualité (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), and Didier Fassin and Éric Fassin (eds), De la question sociale à la question raciale? Représenter la société française (Paris, La  Découverte, 2006). He is also a contributing editor to Public Culture and a member of the editorial committee of the journal French Politics, Culture and Society.* [1]

Georges Felouzis, Professor of Sociology, University Victor-Segalen, Bordeaux II

Georges Felouzis’ scholarship has consistently focused on the sociology of education. His publications include a recent book co-authored with Francoise Liot and Joëlle Perroton entitled L’Apartheid scolaire: Enquête sur la ségrégation scolaire dans les collèges (Educational Apartheid: a Report on Educational Segregation in Lower Secondary Schools, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2005). In 2006 he wrote a report for the FASILD (Fonds d’action et de soutien pour l’intégration et la lutte contre les discriminations) entitled La Polarisation sociale et ethnique des collèges dans l’académie de Bordeaux (Social and Ethnic Polarization in Schools in the Académie of Bordeaux). Both these works underline the development of an ethnic and social segregation in the French educational system, and have lately received much attention from French academics and policy makers alike. Georges Felouzis is currently conducting a vast research project on employment discrimination in Europe .

Julie A. Fernandes, Senior Policy Analyst and Senior Counsel at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)

Established in 1950, LCCR is a civil and human rights coalition which consists of more than 190 national organizations representing persons of color, women, children, labor unions, individuals with disabilities, older Americans, major religious groups, gays and lesbians, and civil liberties and human rights groups.  Its mission is to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective civil rights legislation and policy.  Prior to her position with LCCR, Ms. Fernandes worked for the U.S. Department of Justice where she served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division and as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Bill Lann Lee.  In that position, Ms. Fernandes worked primarily on legal and policy issues related to voting rights, international human rights, and police misconduct, including racial profiling.   Ms. Fernandes also served as Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton at the White House Domestic Policy Council.  There, her work focused on the development of policy in the areas of immigration, race relations, and civil rights. 

Ms. Fernandes received both her J.D. and A.B. degrees from the University of Chicago .   After law school, she was the Karpatkin Fellow in the National Legal Department of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she focused on race and poverty issues, and clerked for the Honorable Diane P. Wood at the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

Owen Fiss, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale University

Owen Fiss graduated from Dartmouth , Oxford , and Harvard. He clerked for Thurgood Marshall (when Marshall was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit) and later for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He served as special assistant to the assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 1966 to 1968.  Professor Fiss then taught at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty at the Yale Law School in 1974. One of America ’s preeminent constitutional scholars, Owen Fiss teaches procedure, legal theory, and constitutional law.  He has received numerous awards for his work. His publications include The Irony of Free Speech (Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1996); A Community of Equals: The Constitutional Protection of New Americans (Boston, Beacon Press, 1999); The Law as It Could Be ( New York , New York University Press, 2003). Most recently, he has published the essay A Way Out: America’s Ghettos and the Legacy of Racism ( Princeton , Princeton University Press, 2003) which suggests policies to end segregation through moving people out of inner cities.

Linda Hamilton Krieger, Professor, Boalt Hall Law School , University of California at Berkeley

Professor Krieger has a B.A. from Stanford University and a J.D. from New York University .  She practiced as a civil rights lawyer at the Employment Law Center in San Francisco and as a senior trial attorney for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. During her 13 years of practice, she handled, at both the trial and appellate levels, a number of groundbreaking employment rights cases. From 1991 to 1995, she was a lecturer and then an acting associate professor at Stanford Law School . She joined the Boalt Hall Faculty in 1996 and received the Rutter Award for Teaching Distinction in 2000. This year Professor Krueger is a visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School . Her publications include the edited volume Backlash against the ADA: Reinterpreting Disability Rights (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2003); “Civil Rights Perestroika: Intergroup Relations After Affirmative Action,” California Law Review (66, 1998); “The Content of Our Categories: A Cognitive Bias Approach to Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunity”, Stanford Law Review (54, 1995); and “Behavioral Realism in Employment Discrimination Law: Implicit Bias and Disparate Treatment” [with Susan T. Fiske], California Law Review  (94, 2006).* [1]

Gary Lavergne, Director of Policy Analysis and Research for the Admissions Office of the University of Texas at Austin

            Gary M. Lavergne holds degrees in social studies education and secondary school teaching (University of Louisiana, 1976, 1981) as well as in educational administration (McNeese University, 1988). He has experience in every level of education from teacher-aide to Bureau Chief of a state agency. In higher education he has served with the American College Testing Program (ACT) and as a Director of Admissions and Guidance Services for the The College Board. In addition to articles on his French Cajun heritage, Mr. Lavergne  is the author of three crime/criminal justice books and numerous articles on secondary and higher education. He currently holds the position of Director of Admissions Research and Policy Analysis at The University of Texas at Austin . His publications include A Sniper in the Tower (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1997), Bad Boy from Rosebud (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), and Worse Than Death ( Denton , University of North Texas Press , 2003). He has appeared on the Today Show, Dateline NBC, and was also a History Channel featured author.* [1]

Arnaud Lefranc, Economist, Université de Cergy-Pontoise and Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute

            A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, Arnaud Lefranc also studied at the University Paris I, the London School of Economics, from which he has a M.Phil, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales where he completed his Ph.D. in Economics. A professor of Economics at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise, he is currently a research fellow at the European University Institute in Florence . A Fulbright visiting scholar at the University of Princeton in 1998, Arnaud Lefranc has shown particular interest in earnings inequality and unemployment in France and the United States - his dissertation thesis was entitled: Unemployment, Mobility and Inequality: A Comparative Study of the French and US Labor Markets- and he has also recently started to focus on the issue of equality of opportunity (including) racial discrimination in employment, education and income. His publications include [with Daniel Cohen and Gilles Saint Paul] “French Unemployment: a Transatlantic Perspective”, Economy Policy, 25, 1997; [with John Roemer, et. Al], “To What Extent do Fiscal Regimes Equalize Opportunities for Income Acquisition Among Citizens?”, Journal of Public Economics, 87, 2003; [with Alain Trannoy] “Intergenerational earnings mobility in France : is France more mobile than the US ”, Annales d’Économie et Statistique, 78, 2005.* [1]

Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University

Glenn Loury holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.  He previously taught at Harvard University and from 1997 to 2003 he served as the founding director of the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University . Professor Loury has contributed to a variety of areas in applied microeconomic theory including welfare economics, the economics of income distribution and the economics of discrimination and affirmative action. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and Vice President of the American Economics Association. Glenn Loury is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  His publications include One by One From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (New York, The Free Press, 1995 – winner of the American Book Award); The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 2002); and [with Tarik Modood and Steven Teles] the edited volume Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and the UK (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005). 

Claude-Valentin Marie, Vice-President of the Haute autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité (HALDE)

Claude-Valentin Marie is a sociologist and a demographer whose work has mainly focused on the conditions of immigrant workers in France . From 1988 to 1997, he was the director of Studies, Research and Statistics at the Mission Interministérielle de Lutte contre les trafics de main-d’œuvre and at the Délégation interministérielle à la lutte contre le travail illégal from 1998 to 2000. Claude-Valentin Marie has devoted much of his research to the sociology of migrations and antidiscrimination policies.  His publications include “Les Antillais en France: une nouvelle donne”, Hommes & Migrations (1237, 2002); and “L'Union Européenne face aux déplacements de populations. Logiques d'Etat face aux droits des personnes”, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales (12, 1996).  He is currently the Vice-President of the Haute autorité de lutte contre les discriminations et pour l’égalité (HALDE), which is the government agency responsible for developing and enforcing antidiscrimination policies in France .  He is also conducting research at the Institut National d’Études Démographiques (INED).

Wayne Meisel, President of the Bonner Foundation

            A Young Leader of the French-American Foundation, Wayne Meisel is the President of the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, which supports scholarships for low-income students at 22 schools in the Southeast and Midwest through the Bonner Scholars Program. Mr. Meisel graduated from Harvard University cum laude with a B.A. in government. He was a John Harvard Scholar for the highest academic achievement and was awarded a John Finley Travelling Fellowship. He founded the internationally known Campus Outreach Opportunity League (COOL) and has served on the National Boards of Directors of the Independent Sector, COOL, and The New Grange School, a nationally acclaimed school for youths with learning disabilities. He was also a founding board member of the President’s Commission on National and Community Service and Teach for America . He is the co-author of Common Good-Common Ground: Building Commitment & Community (White Plains, NY, Peter Pauper Press, 1999).

Ann Morning, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, New York University

            Ann Morning earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at Princeton (2004), received an M.A. of International Affairs from Columbia (1992) and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale (1990). Her research focuses on the origin and meanings of racial classification.

            An Assistant Professor in Sociology at NYU, Ann Morning concentrates on the uses of racial classification in demography, law, medicine, and genetic research, with a particular focus on the categorization of multiracial population and immigrant-origin groups. She has published a number of articles dealing with race and ethnicity, among which: “Multiracial Classification on the United States Census: Myth, Reality and Future Impact”, Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 21 (2), 2005; “On Distinction”, in “Is Race Real?”, a web forum organized by the Social Science Research Council, http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Morning/, (2005); “From Sword to Plowshare: Using Race for Discrimination and Antidiscrimination in the United States” [with Daniel Sabbagh], International Social Science Journal,  57 (183), 2005.

            Ann Morning was a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow in 2002-2003, and is currently the recipient of a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University (2006-2007). In 2005, she was both the co-recipient of the American Sociological Association Dissertation Award, and of the Faculty of the Year Award from the NYU Department of Sociology Graduate Student Association.* [1]

Devah Pager, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Faculty Associate of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University

Devah Pager holds Masters Degrees from Stanford University and the University of Cape Town , and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on institutions affecting racial stratification, including education, labor markets, and the criminal justice system.  Her publications include [with Lincoln Quillian] “Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do”, American Sociological Review, 70 (3), 2005;  “Double Jeopardy: Race, Crime, and Getting a Job”, Wisconsin Law Review, 2 2005; “The Mark of a Criminal Record”, American Journal of Sociology, 108 (5), 2003. Pager’s current research has involved a series of field experiments studying discrimination against minorities and ex-offenders in the low-wage labor market.  As a separate line of work, she recently spent a year in Paris on a Fulbright grant studying changes in crime policy and its relationship to patterns of immigration and ethnic tension in contemporary France.* [1]

Dennis Parker, Director of the Racial Justice Program, American Civil Liberties Union

            Dennis Parker is a graduate of Middlebury College and Harvard Law School . Prior to joining the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2006, Mr. Parker, J.D, was the Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the Office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer where he oversaw the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in housing, employment, voting, public accommodations and credit. He spent 14 years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where he supervised the litigation of scores of cases throughout the country in matters involving elementary and secondary education, affirmative action in higher education and equal educational opportunity. Dennis Parker has also worked with the New York Legal Aid Society. Along with Howard Zuckerman and Joseph Disalvo, he is the author of the Fair Housing Litigation Handbook (New York, Wiley, 1993). He is an adjunct professor at New York Law School where he has taught a course on Race Poverty and Constitutional Law.* [1]

Shanny Peer, Director of Programs, French-American Foundation

Shanny Peer holds a B.A. in French from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. from New York University ’s interdisciplinary Institute of French Studies . She was an Assistant Professor of French Studies for ten years, first at the University of Vermont , and then at New York University .  Her publications include France on Display: Peasants, Provincials, and Folklore in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998) and Equal from the Start: Promoting Educational Opportunity for All Preschool Children – Learning from the French Experience (2002).  Shanny Peer joined the French-American Foundation in 2000.  For several years she led the Foundation’s Early Education Program, which involved organizing study tours, conferences, and briefings for policymakers, authoring a report, and disseminating program findings and recommendations.  Since January 2005, she has been Director of Programs at FAF.  Her most important new social policy program focuses on “Equality of Opportunity: French and American Perspectives.”

Franck Poupeau, Sociologist, Research Fellow, Centre de Sociologie Européenne

            Franck Poupeau holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and an agrégation in philosophy. Most of his research has focused on education, but also on socio-spatial inequalities (including the theme of access to other public goods such as water). His publications include Contestations scolaires et ordre social: les enseignants de
Seine-Saint-Denis en grève, Paris, Syllepse, 2004 and Une Sociologie d'État : l'école et ses experts en France, Paris, Raisons d'agir, 2003. Mr. Poupeau has recently completed a broad study on segregation in Seine Saint-Denis, which is going to be published soon in a book : Le Sens du placement: les enjeux de la carte scolaire. He is the editor of Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales.* [1]

Emmanuelle Saada, Associate Professor, Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies, Columbia University

Emmanuelle Saada joined the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University in 2006. She received her academic training in France , first at the École Normale Supérieure in sociology and history and later at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), where she received her Ph.D. in 2001. From 1997 to 2003, she worked at the Institute of French Studies at New York University , first as Assistant Director and later as a faculty fellow. In 2003, Emmanuelle Saada joined the faculty of the EHESS. Her main field of research is the historical sociology of colonization, with a specific interest in law, citizenship and families. Her dissertation examined the legal status of racially mixed children in the French Empire. It will be published later in 2006 by La Découverte under the title Les Enfants de la colonie: les métis de l'Empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté. Her other publications include two edited symposia, “L’État colonial” (with Romain Bertrand), Politix, n°66, 2004, and “Regards Croisés: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Colonial Situation”, French Politics, Culture, and Society, 20 (2), 2002.

Daniel Sabbagh, Senior Research Fellow, Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (CERI-Sciences Po).

           A former “Visiting Assistant in Research” at Yale, Daniel Sabbagh holds a doctorate in political science from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (2000). He is the author of L’Égalité par le droit: les paradoxes de la discrimination positive aux États-Unis (Paris, Economica, 2003 ; English translation forthcoming under the title Equality and Transparency: A Strategic Perspective on Affirmative Action in American Law, New York , Palgrave, 2007). That book derived from his dissertation, which received the « Prix François Furet » in 2004. Along with Law Professor Gwénaële Calvès, within the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales, he has set up a research group on antidiscrimination policies in comparative perspective that has been active since 2001. During the Spring Semester of 2006, Daniel Sabbagh was a Visiting Fellow at the NYU Remarque Institute and a Visiting Professor at Columbia ’s School of International and Public Affairs. His other publications include the edited symposium “Affirmative Action” [with Patrick Simon], International Social Science Journal, 57, 2005 and “Judicial Uses of Subterfuge: Affirmative Action Reconsidered”, Political Science Quarterly, 18 (3), 2003. He is the co-editor of the journal Critique internationale.* [1]

Frederick Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at Harvard University ’s Kennedy School of Government

A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Harvard Law School , Professor Schauer’s scholarship focuses on constitutional law, freedom of speech and press, international legal development, and the philosophical dimensions of law and rules. Formerly a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan , Chair of the Section on Constitutional Law of the Association of American Law Schools, and Vice President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, Professor Schauer is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. His publications include Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes ( Cambridge ( Mass. ), Harvard University Press, 2003); Playing by the Rules: A Philosophical Examination of Rule-Based Decision-Making in Law and in Life (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991); and Free Speech: A Philosophical Inquiry (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1982). He has received a Distinguished Teacher Award from Harvard University in 2004.* [1]

Theodore M. Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF)

Theodore M. Shaw graduated from Wesleyan University and from the Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Charles Evans Hughes Fellow. Upon graduation, he worked as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice from 1979 until 1982 in Washington , D.C. He litigated civil rights cases throughout the country at the trial and appellate levels, and in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Mr. Shaw resigned from the Justice Department in protest of the Reagan Administration's civil rights policies. He joined the NAACP LDF in 1982. In 1987, he established LDF's Western Regional Office in Los Angeles , and served as its Western Regional Counsel. In 1990, he left LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, where he taught constitutional law, civil procedure, and civil rights. In 1993, on a leave of absence from Michigan , he rejoined LDF as Associate Director-Counsel. Mr. Shaw was lead counsel in a coalition that represented African-American and Latino student-intervenors in the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions case. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court heard that case, along with one challenging the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School. The Court ruled in favor of diversity as a compelling state interest.

Mr. Shaw has testified before Congress and before state legislatures on numerous occasions. He also has traveled and lectured extensively on civil rights and human rights in Europe, South Africa , South America, and Japan . In addition to being an adjunct professor of law at Columbia Law School , he currently serves on the Legal Advisory Network of the European Roma Rights Council, based in Budapest , Hungary . Mr. Shaw is a member of the bar in New York and in California , and is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.

Roxane Silberman, Sociologist, Senior Research Fellow, Centre Maurice Halbwachs

From 1998 to 2004 Roxanne Silberman was director of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs, former LASMAS, the Institute of Longitudinal Studies , a research unit that has been supported by the CNRS since 1986. Since 2005, she has been directing the Interministerial Committee on Statistics in the Social and Human Sciences, and as such is responsible for developing a nation-wide approach to the use of statistics (surveys and data bases) in social science research. She is also a Director of Research with the CNRS and remains affiliated with the Centre Maurice Halbwachs.   She coordinates a European program on the integration of immigrant populations  as part of the EQUALSOC network. A specialist of international migration and social mobility, she has conducted research on the labor market conditions of immigrants and their children and has focused in particular on unskilled workers in the labor market. Her publications include [with Irène Fournier] “Les Secondes générations sur le marché du travail en France: une pénalité ethnique ancrée dans le temps. Contribution à la théorie de l’assimilation segmentée”, Revue française de sociologie, 47 (2), 2006 ; « Les Inégalités économiques des immigrés et de leurs enfants », Cahiers Français, 314, 2003 ; and “Decolonization, Immigration and the Social Origins of the Second Generation: The Case of North Africans in France” , International Migration Review, 36 (4), 2002. She has an article forthcoming in Ethnic and Racial Studies [with R. Alba and I. Fournier] entitled “Segmented Assimilation in France ? Discrimination in the Labor Market Against the Second Generation.”* [1]

Patrick Simon, Research Fellow, Institut National d’Études Démographiques

 Patrick Simon is the head of the research unit “Migrations internationales et minorities” at INED. A sociologist and demographer, his scholarship focuses on the predicament of second-generation immigrants, discrimination, the social and ethnic division of space, housing conditions, and statistical classification. A member of the executive board of the International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe, an EU funding network of research centers in the area of migration and integration studies, Patrick Simon has recently coordinated a comparative study on the collection of data to measure the extent and impact of discrimination in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands for the European Commission. He has co-edited with Daniel Sabbagh a symposium drawing partly from that study (“Affirmative Action”, International Journal of Social Science, 57, 2005). His other publications include “France and the unknown second generation,” International Migration Review, 37:4, 2003; “Challenging the ‘French Model of Integration’: Discrimination and the Labor Market Case in France”, Studi Emigrazione, 152, 2003; and [with Valérie Amiraux] “There are no Minorities Here: Cultures of Scholarship and Public Debate on Immigrants and Integration in France”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 47, 2006.* [1]

Susan P. Sturm, George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and Social Responsibility, Columbia University School of Law.

            Susan P. Sturm holds a B.A. from Brown University , and a J.D. from Yale. Starting her career as a law clerk to the Honorable Charles E. Stewart, U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, Ms. Sturm worked in private practice specializing in employment discrimination between 1982 and 1986, and then became a member of the University of Pennsylvania Law Faculty (1986-1999). She joined the Columbia faculty in 2000. Her teaching and scholarly interests include employment discrimination, new forms of public problem solving, conflict resolution, race and gender, public law remedies, and civil procedure. Her recent publications include: “The Architecture of Inclusion: Advancing Workplace Equity in Higher Education”, 29 Harvard Journal of Law and Gender 247 (2006); “Law’s Role in Addressing Complex Discrimination,” in Handbook of Research on Employment Discrimination: Rights and Realities 35 (24), Laura Beth Nielsen and Robert L. Nelson, eds (Springer, 2006); “Equality and the Forms of Justice,” 58 University of Miami Law Review 51 (2003); “Learning from Conflict: Reflections on Teaching about Race and Gender,”   Journal of Legal Education  53 (515), 2003; “Second Generation Employment Discrimination: A Structural Approach,” 101 Columbia Law Review 458 (2001).

Susan P. Sturm is a member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Diversity Initiatives at Columbia University . A Karpatkin Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, she received a Ford Foundation grant as part of the Reaffirming Action project to study cutting-edge practices to diversify university faculties.* [1]

Louis-Georges Tin, associate professor at the University of Orléans, spokesperson of CRAN (Representative Committee of Black Associations in France) and Director of the IDAHO (International Day Against Homophobia) Committee

A former student from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris , Louis-Georges Tin holds a doctorate in Literature from Paris X-Nanterre (2003) entitled “Tragedy and Politics in France in the sixteenth century”, and teaches at the University of Orléans .  His two main subjects of inquiry are French literature of the Renaissance, and the history of sexuality. Besides articles on Rabelais, Molière and Giraudoux, Mr. Tin has published an anthology of the sixteenth century poetry “Anthologie de la poésie du XVIe siècle” [with Jean Céard] (Paris, Gallimard, 2005), and supervised the “Dictionnaire de l’homophobie” project, involving 75 researchers from 15 countries (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2003). He currently manages a book collection devoted to sexual orientation and gender issues at Autrement editions, Paris .

In parallel to his research work, Mr. Tin has been at the forefront of the gay and lesbian movement, as well as deeply involved in French Black minority rights, acting as the spokesperson of CRAN (Conseil Représentatif des Associations Noires), to promote better integration. He launched the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO), which was celebrated for the first time on May 17, 2005 in more than 40 countries and is now officially recognized by the EU Parliament. Mr. Tin is currently working on an international call “For a universal decriminalization of homosexuality” that will be addressed to the Council of human rights of the United Nations.* [1]

Joël Vallat, Principal of the Lycée Louis le Grand

Joël Vallat is the head of the prestigious Lycée Louis Le Grand and the President of the Association des Proviseurs de Lycées à Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles. As such, he has recently taken measures to open up the classes préparatoires so as to increase social diversity within their student bodies. He is also a member of the Board of the Fondation Besse, a foundation which distributes scholarships to engineering students.

Agnès Van Zanten, Senior Research Fellow in Sociology, CNRS/Observatoire Sociologique du Changement (Sciences Po)

            Agnès Van Zanten heads the research group “RAPPE” (Réseau d’analyse pluridisciplinaire des politiques éducatives) at the CNRS and the network on « Sociologie de l’éducation et de la formation » at the Association française de sociologie. Her scholarship has focused on educational policies, school segregation, and educational inequalities from both a collective and an individual perspective. Her publications include L’École de la périphérie: scolarité et ségrégation en banlieue, Paris , Presses Universitaires de France, 2001 ; the edited volume L’École: l’état des savoirs, Paris, La Découverte, 2000 ; and “ Middle-class Parents and Social Mix in French Urban Schools : Reproduction and Transformation of Class Relations in Education ”, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 13 :2, 2003 (pp. 107-123).  Agnès Van Zanten is currently conducting a comparative study of the new policies aimed at opening elite institutions of higher education to students economically disadvantaged and/or belonging to marginalized, underrepresented groups in France with a planned comparison with the U.K. and the U.S. * [1]

Patrick Weil, Senior Research Fellow, CNRS-University Paris I (Center for 20^th Century Social History)

Patrick Weil is a historian and political scientist whose scholarship focuses mostly on immigration and naturalization law and policy, in a comparative perspective. His numerous books and articles on these topics include La France et ses étrangers (Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1991) ; Qu’est-ce qu’un Français ? Une Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution (Paris, Grasset, 2002) ; and La République et sa diversité (Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2005). In 1997, he wrote a report for then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin on immigration policy in France and is credited with having inspired the “Loi Chevènement”. Patrick Weil has often been consulted by policymakers on immigration issues and has recently submitted proposals for educational reforms to increase the social diversity of elite institutions of higher education in France similar to US “percentage plans”. He is also a transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Paris .* [1]