AKA Review - June 30, 2023

From The New Yorker:

After Affirmative Action Ends
By Jeannie Suk Gerson

Institutions nationwide are reaffirming their commitment to enrolling racially diverse classes using race-neutral methods. Harvard Law Professor Jeannie Suk Gerson looks at the history of discrimination cases that claim such policies, devised with diversity outcomes in mind, are racially discriminatory. She points to a future in which "the conventionally liberal and conservative intuitions on discrimination are entirely flipped." In this new world, Suk predicts, liberal judges will find it easy to brush past evidence of possible discrimination against Asian Americans in just the way that conservative judges have often done with discrimination against Black people. Read this article.

From Michigan State University College of Law:
Big Ten Law Schools Affirm Their Commitment to Diversity

Statement from the Deans of the Big Ten Law Schools
If there were any doubt about the commitment of higher education institutions to advancing diversity, this statement from the deans of the Big Ten law schools demonstrates their readiness to do so through any "legally permissible means." It is particularly compelling to hear schools that educate for what the American Bar Association itself has described as the least diverse profession ground their commitment in the need to prepare law students "to work with clients and communities who embody the differences that make this country great." Read this article.

From The New York Times:
Is a Revolution in Cancer Treatment Within Reach?
By Katie Pickert
The public discourse around cancer often assumes that research will eventually produce one silver-bullet cure. In truth, switching among different treatments is rapidly becoming the standard of care for many patients. For them, cancer drug development is outpacing the growth of cancer cells inside their bodies, and by hopping among new treatments, they keep their cancer in check throughout their long lives. This leads us to ask: what other ills might be addressed through a series of remedies, none individually sustainable for the long term but nonetheless successful collectively? Read this article.

From ProPublica:

Can America’s Students Recover What They Lost During the Pandemic?
By Alec MacGillis
In this emotionally compelling story of one school system’s efforts to make up for lost years of progress in mathematics and reading during the pandemic, Alec MacGillis highlights how—even in the face of stark data and proven solutions—political, emotional, and financial considerations on the part of the many stakeholders involved conspire to stymie programs to meet the educational and social needs of students and their communities. Read this article.

From The Atlantic:

The Coming of the Humanist Renaissance
By Adrienne LaFrance
Artificial intelligence has become one of the fastest evolving technologies of our time. Although its increasingly rapid, more complex, and diversely applicable results are widely, often breathlessly, touted, in this article Adrienne LaFrance depicts AI’s disadvantages as its lack of human interactions and the greed for profit driving its development and usage. To meet the rise of such artificial superintelligence, she argues, we need a cultural and philosophical movement able to develop ethical principles and protect human rights. Read this article.