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1 On June , , in a landmark decision destined to affect school districts across the country, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two voluntary schoolintegration plans, one in Louisville, Kentucky, and the other in Seattle, Washington. The Court’s ruling in these joined cases challenged voluntary integration policies in K– schools, maintaining that such policies discriminate on the basis of race. The Court’s conservative majority found that the schools’ methods for achieving racial diversity went too far. According to Justice John Roberts, the districts “failed to show that they considered methods other than explicit racial classifications to achieve their stated goals.” Rejecting arguments for the use of race-based distinctions to remedy societal discrimination , he opined, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (Greenberg and de Vogue ). In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed that the Louisville and Seattle school integration plans went too far, but he disagreed with Roberts and other Court conservatives’ view that race may almost never be considered as a factor in school integration efforts. Instead, Kennedy argued that race may be a component of school plans to achieve diversity, leaving the door slightly ajar to all school districts that are contemplating future options. Although these cases concerned K– schools, many educational leaders, civil rights attorneys, and higher education officials also kept a close eye on them, especially because they drew on the legal briefs from the  Grutter v. Bollinger Supreme Court ruling involving the University of Michigan’s Law School, which upheld the right of institutions in some circumstances to consider race in admissions. Many who defended that right feared that the Seattle and Louisville cases would give the Supreme Court an opportunity to attack the Grutter decision. They were relieved when that did not happen. Introduction Listen to the Submerged Voices—Faculty Agency in a Challenging Climate WINNIFRED R. BROWN-GLAUDE What the Louisville and Washington cases have exposed, nonetheless, is continuing, organized opposition to efforts to redress the effects of past discrimination and improve educational access for underrepresented groups. The cases showed once again that public discussion of these topics has increasingly been influenced by critics who claim that the goal of equality is being replaced by a system of racial preferences that runs counter to the American creed. In this narrative, whites are portrayed as victims of reverse discrimination in dramas designed to fuel resentment of any attempt to achieve greater racial balance in education. Meanwhile, public supporters of policies that take race into account are not focusing on the many arguments that support their views, including the demonstrable, universal benefits of diverse classrooms, curricula, and teachers. Instead, they have understandably felt obliged to devote their energies to rebutting the critics, reminding them of real, if polarizing, evidence that people of color everywhere in the United States continue to be regularly discriminated against, even in institutions of primary, secondary, and higher education. These opposed stances, in various articulations, occupy center stage in ongoing public forums on affirmative action and diversity in education. While such forums may exemplify some of the best qualities of a democracy, such as an ability to engage divergent perspectives, it is striking and troubling that those most deeply involved in education “on the ground”—namely, K– teachers and college and university professors—are not playing a more central role in public debates on diversity. These individuals have firsthand experience with the effects of diverse classrooms and curricula (or the lack thereof) on their students’ learning outcomes. Yet save for a small, vocal group of largely white male faculty, many of whom have migrated to think tanks supported by right-wing funders, the voices of a much larger group of classroom educators and research scholars—those who argue in favor of the positive effects of affirmative action and diversity—are rarely heard in public. This book is part of a wider effort to change the debate by focusing on the transformative work of a group of largely unsung and overworked faculty members who are leading diversity initiatives in the academy. They turn out to be primarily older tenured women and faculty of color, joined by a hardy if smaller group of older tenured white male allies. As far as I am aware, no collective account of their activities has ever been published. The Ford Foundation generously gave the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University the opportunity to gather and present these stories, challenging...

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