Sheryll Cashin

Sheryll Cashin, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, teaches Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, and Race and American Law among other subjects. She writes about race relations, government and inequality in America. Her new book, Place Not Race: A New Vision of Opportunity in America (forthcoming Beacon Press, 2014), argues that affirmative action as currently practiced does little to help disadvantaged people and offers a new framework for true inclusion. Her book, The Failures of Integration (PublicAffairs, 2004) was an Editors' Choice in the New York Times Book Review. Cashin is also a two-time nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for non-fiction (2005 and 2009). She has published widely in academic journals and written commentaries for several periodicals, including the L.A. Times, Washington Post, and Education Week.

Cashin is an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) and Building ONE America, an emerging national network of state and regional coalitions promoting sustainable growth and social inclusion. She has published widely in academic journals and print media, including in the L.A Generic Cialis. Times, Washington Post, and Education Week. She has appeared on NPR All Things Considered, NPR Talk of the Nation, The Diane Rehm Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Newshour With Jim Leher, CNN, BET, ABC News, and numerous local programs.

Professor Cashin worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on urban and economic policy, particularly concerning community development in inner-city neighborhoods. She was law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. As a Marshall Scholar, she went on to receive a masters in English Law, with honors, from Oxford University and a J.D., with honors, from Harvard Law School, where she was a member of the Harvard Law Review.

Cashin was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, where her parents were political activists. She is married to Marque Chambliss and the mother of twin boys, Logan and Langston.

Book: http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2387

Speaker Abstract

Place, Not Race: The Geography of Educational Opportunity  
Cashin will present the main argument in her new book -- that growing segregation of the affluent and college-educated contributes to opportunity hoarding. Place is becoming a primary mechanism for structuring advantage and disadvantage in the US. In 1954, Linda Brown's brown skin locked her out of her neighborhood school. Sixty years later, black and brown children can attend their neighborhood school. Those in low performing schools are shut out of better opportunities not because of the color of their skin but but because of where they live. Increasingly struggling people of all colors are locked out of high opportunity neighborhoods that set children up well to enter selective higher education. This has implications for the affirmative action debate. Cashin will summarize reforms she advocates in university admissions (e.g., place-based affirmative action, financial aide based solely on need, making standardized tests optional) to mitigate the effects of separate and unequal K-12 education. She will also offer suggestions on how to build multiracial coalitions for policies that will promote integration and a fairer distribution of opportunity.