Gary Orfield

Who is Gary Orfield?

Gary Orfield is an American professor of education, law, political science and urban planning at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, formerly of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is co-founder of The Civil Rights Project, now called The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. He founded the project in 1996 to provide needed intellectual capital to academics, policy makers and civil rights advocates. The project has commissioned more than 400 studies and 15 books.

In addition to many studies of desegregation, Orfield is an author or editor of many books and reports including the recent publications: Dropouts in America, Lessons in Integration, Higher Education and the Color Line, and spoken out for affirmative action and against standardized testing, and particularly the use of test scores to deny high school graduation in the book, Raising Standards or Raising Barriers. He was professor of education and social policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for 16 years. Orfield is interested in the study of civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity.