By The Editors
A newly-published study states that, contrary to the conventional belief, students of color, and especially black students, are not favored more than whites in gaining grants and scholarships.

The scholarships awarded by the Lehman Fund and the Warren Program have provided over $19 million in financial support to undergraduates and law students, making it possible for hundreds of highly qualified students to attend the nation’s most competitive colleges, universities and law schools.

The ACLU, NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) announced today that they oppose the Michigan Attorney General’s request to convene a special 16-judge panel to reconsider the court’s decision this month striking down Michigan’s Proposal 2.  The attorney general expressed his plans to request a rehearing by the full court of appeals today.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down a Michigan ballot initiative that unconstitutionally limited access to opportunity at the state’s public universities and in other contexts. Passed in 2006 and commonly known as “Proposal 2,” the initiative was a deliberate effort to prohibit precisely the types of race-conscious admissions policies that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) as constitutionally permissible approaches to ensuring pathways to leadership in our nation’s civic, political, and economic life.

By George E. Curry
“Collectively, the pathway data show that more than 51 percent of Hispanic males, 45 percent of African American males, 42 percent of Native American males and 33 percent of Asian American males ages 15-24 will end up unemployed, incarcerated or dead.”

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit rebuffed a request to reconsider its prior ruling upholding the constitutionality of the admissions program utilized by the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) to assemble a diverse student body.

By Tarice L.S. Gray
Despite their value, finding mentors still proves elusive to many who need them.

By The Editors
Black alumni of Yale’s Class of 1970 are dying at a starkly disproportionate rate. What’s race got to do with it?

By Lee A. Daniels
The death in February 2010 of Theodore Lamont Cross deprived the world of a man, as Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel said in tribute, “of remarkable achievements in several different careers.”

One of those careers was as the founder and publisher for 17 years of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a gold mine of information about the status of African Americans in higher education – and, in broader terms, of their status in American society as a whole

This week, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) requested leave to file a friend-of-the-court brief opposing further appellate review in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin).