The Universities And The Social Problem

The use of race-based affirmative action in higher education has given rise to hundreds of books and law review articles, numerous court decisions, and several state initiatives to ban the practice. However, surprisingly little has been said or written or done to challenge a larger, longstanding "affirmative action" program that tends to benefit wealthy whites: legacy preferences for the children of alumni. "Affirmative Action for the Rich" sketches the origins of legacy preferences, examines the philosophical issues they raise, outlines the extent of their use today, studies their impact on university fundraising, and reviews their implications for civil rights. In addition, the book outlines two new theories challenging the legality of legacy preferences, examines how a judge might review those claims, and assesses public policy options for curtailing alumni preferences. The book includes chapters by Michael Lind of the New America Foundation; Peter Schmidt of the "Chronicle of Higher Education"; former "Wall Street Journal" reporter Daniel Golden; Chad Coffman of Winnemac Consulting, attorney Tara O'Neil, and student Brian Starr; John Brittain of the University of the District of Columbia Law School and attorney Eric Bloom; Carlton Larson of the University of California--Davis School of Law; attorneys Steve Shadowen and Sozi Tulante; Sixth Circuit Court Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr. and attorney Donya Khalili; and education writer Peter Sacks.

Each chapter in this innovative social problems text is written by a specialist or pair of specialists from appropriate subfields within sociology. The typical single-author approach is limiting given the complexity of the contemporary issues surrounding each social problem discussed. Involving many content experts ensures that the theories, research, and examples used in each chapter will be as current and relevant as possible. Chapters open with personal statements from the contributing authors, discussing how they got involved with studying the problem they are writing about. Javier Trevino serves as the general editor, making sure that each author follows the chapter template and maintains a consistency in level and style.

This volume describes proven, practical techniques for promoting key skills in students for everyday social, academic, familial, and vocational success. Based on the work of a highly acclaimed, 15-year, ongoing multisite project, the approach is designed to help professionals encourage the development of enduring life tools and prevent substance abuse, HIV infection, violence, and other behavior-related problems. The program is directed toward children in primarily K-8 populations at high, moderate, and low levels of risk, in both regular and special education contexts.

Bertolt Brecht once worried that how we feel about the victims of a social problem can get in the way of the beauty and attraction of the problem itself. In this book, Walter Benn Michaels explores the same dilemma through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Michaels focuses on the work of several artists, mostly born in the 1970s and thus raised in a world where artistic ambition has been identified with a critique of autonomous form and of meaning as a function of intention. Michaels shows that these artists engage but also push beyond this critique of autonomy and intentionality, producing works that embody a new commitment to form and meaning. The explanation for this commitment, he argues, is these artists consciousness of making art in an economy riven by structural conflict, especially an unprecedented rise in inequality. For them, he argues, the relationship of the art work to the worldto its subject and to its beholderfunctions as an emblem of the relation between classes (rather than identities or subject positions). This book will join the short shelf of essential writings about the medium of photography."

This book is a narrative of conversations between two professors, with different backgrounds, academic disciplines, life experiences, and from different continents. It shows how their discourse has brought them to a single destination defined by a mutual interest in the social purposes of universities, and a hope in common that their academic efforts will somehow do good in the world. The seventeen internationally-agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide focus for aspirations and plans regarding sustainability, but notably, the SDGs’ targets and indicators rarely provide detailed accounts of who is expected to enact change. This book addresses the role of higher education in this context and explores the social purposes of universities and their relation to the Sustainable Development Goals. It presents an academic analysis of this complex situation, based on insights from published literature on higher education, and the personal but very different experiences of two professors with this shared interest.

Social problems such as unemployment, poverty and drug addiction are a fact of life in industrialised societies. This book examines the sociology of social problems from interesting and challenging perspectives. It analyses how social problems emerge and are defined as such, who takes responsibility for them, who is threatened by them and how they are managed, solved or ignored. The authors examine and critique existing theories of social problems before developing their own theoretical framework. Their 'theory of residualist conversion of social problems' explains how certain social problems threaten legitimate power structures, so that problems of a social or political nature are transformed into personal problems, and the 'helping professions' are left to intervene. This book will become a key reference on class, inequality and social intervention and an important text for students in sociology and social work courses.

Examining at a wide range of issues such as violence, poverty, feminism, racism, and privatization of healthcare, the contributors to this collection use a variety of analytical approaches to posit that the social, economic, and political issues confronting Canadians are shaped by social inequity. At the same time, these essays show how these inequalities are being successfully resisted individually and collectively. This fourth edition adds chapters on youth politics, higher education, technology and work, and immigration.