Amaka Okechukwu. To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions.

Abstract

Universities are highly visible sites that have traditionally defined “diversity” in public discourse and, as Amaka Okechukwu argues, served as standard-bearers for national conversations, debates, and political decisions around racial discrimination. To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions offers a detailed and nuanced account of the actions behind key policy decisions that have shaped ethnic and racial diversity in US higher education in recent decades. A wave of protests swept across university campuses in 2014 and 2015. Student protestors, and sometimes faculty, on US campuses advocated for greater representation of marginalized groups in the student body, on faculty, and in higher levels of university administration. These protests stretched across the United States and beyond to the United Kingdom and South Africa under the banner #RhodesMustFall. As Angus Johnston documents in a detailed online time line and map of these events, this wave of protests entwined an array of student concerns over university mismanagement of sexual assault and harassment cases, anger over the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, fears around racist campus policing, and student protests against tuition hikes, among others. The protests raised questions about university authority and the intentions of those on the boards of trustees. This is where Okechukwu’s book begins. Through meticulous archival research, we gain a nuanced view of the actions that have thwarted fair access to higher education despite decades of mobilization.