Lecture Two: Admissions in the Crosshairs: Politics\, Policy\, and Social Mobility Today
Speaker: James Forman Jr.\, Yale University
Respondent: Alexandra Natapoff\, Harvard Law Sc hool
This is the second of two Tanner Lectures.
Decisions by the United States Supreme C ourt and the Trump administration have compelled universities to revise the ir admissions policies. These lectures ask whether higher education can sti ll function as an engine of social mobility in today’s political and legal climate—and\, if so\, what kinds of admissions policies might help fulfill that promise.
The first lecture situates American universities within the longer historical arc of meritocracy and exclusion\, tracing how they have served–for good and for ill–as gatekeepers to the American Dream. The second lecture turns to the present moment\, analyzing recent political and legal developments and highlighting new approaches to fostering campus div ersity and inclusion.
About the Speakers
James Forman Jr. is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law. He attended public schools in Detroit and New York City before gra duating from the Atlanta Public Schools. After attending Brown University a nd Yale Law School\, he joined the Public Defender Service in Washington\, D.C.\, where for six years he represented both juveniles and adults charged with crimes.
During his time as a public defender\, Professor Forman became frustrated with the lack of education and job training opportunitie s for his clients. In 1997\, along with David Domenici\, he started the May a Angelou School\, an alternative school for school dropouts and youth who had been arrested. In the decades since its founding\, Maya Angelou School has expanded to run multiple schools inside D.C.’s youth and adult prisons— its success was chronicled in the 2023 short documentary film “Welcome to School.” The Maya Angelou leadership team d reams of a world in which no person is behind bars\; in the meantime\, they believe that everyone — including those incarcerated — deserve a high-qual ity education.
Professor Forman’s scholarship focuses on schools\, po lice\, and prisons. He is particularly interested in the race and class dim ensions of those institutions. Professor Forman’s first book\, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America\, was on many top 10 lists\, including The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2017\, and was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfict ion. His second book\, Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for C hange\, was published in 2024 by Farrar Straus & Giroux. Co-edited by Forman\, Premal Dharia and Mario Hawilo\, the anthology focuses on how to u ndo the damage and depredations of the carceral state.
About the Tanner Lectures
In collaboration with the Of fice of the President of Harvard University\, the Mahindra Humanities Cente r hosts annual Tanner Lectures on Human Values. The purpose of the Tanner L ectures is the advancement of scholarly and scientific learning in the fiel d of human values. That purpose embraces the entire range of moral\, artist ic\, intellectual\, and spiritual values\, both individual and social – the full register of values pertinent to the human condition\, interest\, beha vior\, and aspiration.
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a nonpr ofit corporation administered at the University of Utah. They are funded by an endowment and other gifts received by the University of Utah from Obert Clark Tanner and Grace Adams Tanner. More information: www.tannerlectures.utah.edu.
LOCATION:John Knowles Paine Concert Hall\, Music Building GEO:0.000000;0.000000 ORGANIZER;CN="Kayla Kaszyca":MAILTO:kkaszyca@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/the-tanner-lectures-with-james -forman-jr-university-admissions-and-the-american-dream-who-gets-in-and-why -it-matters-lecture-two/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Tanner_Web_1920x1080_Final.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20260308T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR