Lani Guinier

Lani Guinier, a lawyer whose innovative and provocative writings on racial justice and voting rights were used to undermine her nomination to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division early in the presidency of Bill Clinton, died Jan. 7 at an assisted-living facility in Cambridge, Mass. She was 71.

.... While teaching, I saw repeatedly the extent to which my students’ ethics — or ethical lapses — were shaped by their helicopter parents. Now, I’d love to be the one to put a learning on those adults. ...“The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education,” by Lani Guinier. Harvard law professor Guinier delivers an uplifting vision for higher education. She demands we abandon America’s “Testocracy,” which obsesses over standardized test scores that measure little more than access to privilege, in favor of a truly collaborative approach to admissions and education that emphasizes people’s holistic competence. This wake-up call asks America to shatter its current higher education paradigm, because it is neither equitable nor effective.

Amid applause and light drizzle, journalists Judy Woodruff and the late Gwen Ifill received the Radcliffe Medal at the annual Radcliffe Day Ceremony Friday...Woodruff was joined onstage by Walter S. Isaacson ’74, CEO and President of the Aspen Institute and bestselling author of “Steve Jobs” and “Benjamin Franklin: an American Life.” Their discussion covered a broad range of topics, including Woodruff’s friendship with Ifill, career challenges for women and minorities in journalism, and changing conditions for young journalists...Many attendees praised the discussion for how it dealt with issues of gender, race, age, and truth. Lani Guinier ’71, a professor at the Law School, called the discussion, “Amazing, powerful, and emotionally difficult.”

When Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Donald J. Trump’s choice for attorney general, answers questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, he can expect to revisit a long-ago case that has followed him. In 1985, when Sessions was the United States attorney in West Alabama, he prosecuted three African-American civil rights activists, accusing them of voter fraud...Asked by a grand juror whether she’d voted absentee for the first time in the September primary, a Perry County resident named Fannie Mae Williams answered: “Uh-huh. First and last.” Two other women told the grand jury they were done with voting, according to the book “Lift Every Voice,” by Lani Guinier, a professor at Harvard Law School...Hank Sanders organized a team that included defense lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Southern Poverty Law Center, including Guinier.

Sixteen Harvard Law School faculty members have joined thousands of other law professors across the country in signing a letter opposing Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions’s nomination as United States Attorney General... Law School professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., who signed the letter, said Sessions’s record on voting rights, especially for minorities, is deeply troubling to him. “The aim of the letter is to raise the significant issues about voting, which is fundamental to our democratic experiment and, once these issues are raised, we hope that the committee and the citizenry in general would not support this nominee,” Sullivan said. “We certainly think that, party affiliation aside, no Attorney General should have taken such a radical view about voting rights laws.”

If you’ve crammed for the SATs, agonized over creative essay topics, or pestered teachers for recommendations, then you know something about our college admissions process. Namely, that it is very stressful and very complicated. But there are critics who say it’s more than just stressful. It’s totally wrong, and it’s hurting America. Lani Guinier is one of those critics - and she wants a complete redesign: “It has its benefits, but it also has stakes that eliminate the option, or the opportunity, for many working class whites, low-income blacks, to even consider going to these higher education schools.” Guinier is the author of The Tyranny of the Meritocracy and a professor at Harvard Law School.

...Few would argue that the rankings have helped shape a world in which students are seen as consumers, and colleges and universities as commodities. The rankings are a key reason the higher-education landscape today operates like a marketplace in which institutions compete to convince the best students to buy their product...And as for the movement away from admissions tests? Fewer and fewer colleges may be requiring applicants to submit scores, but that doesn’t mean their presence is waning. According to a recent Education Week analysis, high-school testing is tilting heavily toward those very exams: Twenty-one states now require students to take the SAT or ACT, and a dozen use one of the exams as part of their official, federally mandated accountability reports on high-school students. As the Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier, a staunch critic of elite-college admissions, wrote in her book, The Tyranny of Meritocracy: “This is testocracy in action.”

...The distressing features of this much larger part of the higher-education industry have spawned a critical, even dire, literature that merits attention for its own sake—and because the issues echo in the elite stratum, too. And for those seeking entry to the top-tier institutions, the ever more frenzied admissions lottery has begun to provoke overdue skepticism. Herewith, an overview of some recent books with heft....Lani Guinier looks beyond Bruni’s personal narratives and advice to the societal consequences of college admissions as the ultimate funneling device. In The Tyranny of the Meritocracy (Beacon, $24.95), the Boskey professor of law advances a broad argument about the definition of merit as social benefit rather than as individual accomplishment, and the role of inclusiveness in strengthening the civic fabric and better addressing human problems.

Jasleen Kohli estimates that she’s attended more than 100 protests, but until 2013 she couldn’t get arrested in this town. As a lawyer, she often was called on to witness demonstrations and spring her fellow activists from jail...These days, as director of UCLA law school’s Critical Race Studies program, Kohli trains students to scrutinize the role of race in the justice system...Mentored by Lani Guinier, Bill Clinton’s short-lived nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights, Kohli gravitated toward economic justice issues. “Think about jobs, housing, education — a lot of it comes down to different access to resources. The way those resources are allocated comes from a history of racism and institutional privilege.”

For many of the startups among Beacon Press’s neighbors in Fort Point Channel’s Innovation District, the hire of a couple additional telecommuters would be a development hardly worth noting. But for a 161-year-old, mission-driven, nonprofit book publisher to add two remote acquisitions editors — that, in light of an anxious decade in publishing that has included both a recession and massive technological disruption, is striking news. ...For some authors, including ones who otherwise might be published by commercial or academic presses, Beacon’s values are part of its appeal. Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier’s most recent book, “The Tyranny of the Meritocracy,” was published by Beacon in January. “The commitment is to social justice and to sharing information that helps people rather than harms them,” Guinier said. She believes the publisher promotes “a reading conversation — meaning not just people in a bully pulpit.”