Karen L. Miksch

Assessing Our Commitment to Providing a Multicultural Learning Experience

This article provides the quantitative results of a study undertaken by a developmental education program within a large public urban research university to explore the extent to which employees perceive that they themselves and the program as a whole create a welcoming multicultural learning experience for all students. The questionnaire used for this research adapts for higher education a multicultural education assessment instrument (Banks et al., 2001) originally created specifically for elementary and secondary educational institutions.

Teaching Japanese-American Incarceration.

FEW EVENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY are so universally deplored as the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The United States government has acknowledged the error and the injustice that resulted with an official Presidential apology and a Congressional disbursement of reparations to the victims of the incarceration policy. The decision, its implementation, and its consequences for various individuals have been the topics for a variety of historical accounts, museum exhibits, documentary films, short stories, novels, plays and movies. Moder observers are appalled that the United States enacted such an inhumane, unjust and unnecessary policy, yet most citizens at the time thought the policy appropriate, necessary, and humane. The policy was supported overwhelmingly by the American people and the few who opposed the policy were considered unpatriotic and their reasoning bizarre. Most people thought internment of enemy aliens was a normal precaution in wartime situations, made particularly appropriate given the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The residence of Japanese immigrants near military facilities on the west coast and Hawaii seemed to make the

Shaping Educational Policy Through the Courts: The Use of Social Science Research in Amicus Briefs in Fisher I

Different from more traditional policy-making avenues, the courts provide an antipolitical arena that does not require broad agreement from various constituents for policy enactment. Seeking to guide court decisions on these policy issues, individuals and organizations have filed amicus briefs that increasingly include social science to support their arguments. The Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin Supreme Court case presents an ideal example to study the use of social science evidence in amicus briefs to shape educational policy. Findings from this study identify differences in the use of social science research that suggest many ways in which our current understanding of the efforts of actors to shape educational policy via the highest court in the nation is incomplete. This study also highlights why developing this understanding could be extremely useful to both the creation of educational policy and the use of antipolitical approaches to change such policy.