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The racial achievement gap

19 November 2018
6.00pm – 7.15pm AEDT
Room G02 Law Buildling
This event has ended
young students in a relaxed classroom, seen from above

Race and schools in the US and Australia today.

Equal access to quality education is critical to ensuring broader social, political and economic equality. Yet there are persistent gaps in educational access and outcomes based on socio-economic background, and race, in both the US and Australia.

Join Megan Davis, Justin Driver and Adrian Piccoli to discuss what needs to change to address these gaps. Hosted by the Grand Challenge on Inequality.

Speakers
headshot of Megan Davis

Megan Davis

Professor Megan Davis is Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous UNSW and a Professor of Law, UNSW Law. Professor Davis was elected by the UN Human Rights Council to UNEMRIP in 2017. Professor Davis currently serves as a United Nations expert with the UN Human Rights Council's Expert Mechanism on the rights of Indigenous peoples based in UN Geneva. Megan is an Acting Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court. Professor Davis is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. She is a member of the NSW Sentencing Council and an Australian Rugby League Commissioner. Professor Davis was Director of the Indigenous Law Centre, UNSW Law from 2006-2016.

Photo of Rosalind Dixon

Rosalind Dixon

Rosalind Dixon is a Professor of Law and Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at UNSW Sydney. She is a graduate of UNSW and Harvard, and has taught at law schools around the world – including Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago and National University Singapore, and is the author of a new book, with Richard Holden, From Free to Fair Markets: Liberalism after COVID out later this year. She is passionate about law and politics, and currently Director of the Pathways to Politics for Women Program at NSW. 

Headshot of Justin Driver

Justin Driver

Justin Driver is the Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. A graduate of Brown, Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar), and Harvard Law School (where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review), Driver clerked for Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O’Connor. A recipient of the American Society for Legal History’s William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize, Driver has a distinguished publication record in the nation’s leading law reviews. He has also written extensively for lay audiences, including pieces in Slate, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. A member of the American Law Institute and of the American Constitution Society’s Academic Advisory Board, Driver is also an editor of the Supreme Court Review. Before attending law school, Driver received a master’s degree in education from Duke and taught civics and American history to high school students. His first book, The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind, was published by Pantheon in September 2018.

Richard Holden

Richard Holden

Richard Holden is Professor of Economics in the UNSW Business School. Professor Holden received a PhD from Harvard University and was a faculty member at MIT and the University of Chicago before returning to Australia. He has been published in leading economics journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review and Review of Economic Studies. His popular writings have appeared in outlets such as The New York Times, New Republic, American Affairs, Australian Financial Review, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Conversation. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, and of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

head shot of Kevin Lowe

Kevin Lowe

Dr Kevin Lowe is a Gubbi Gubbi man from southeast Queensland and a Senior Research Fellow at Macquarie University. Kevin has lead a team of cross-institutional academics on the ‘Aboriginal Voices’ project; ten detailed systematic reviews of issues impacting on the delivery of education to Indigenous students. Kevin has had extensive, experience across the education sector, including teaching, senior TAFE administrator, University lecturer, and Inspector, Aboriginal Education in the NSW BoS. Kevin will be joining UNSW as Scientia Fellow in 2019.