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Moses, Michele S.
- Associate Professor
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- Department of Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice
- United States
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Michele S. Moses is Associate Professor in Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice within the School of Education of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is affiliated with the Education and the Public Interest Center. She specializes in philosophy, education policy studies, and ethics. Her research centers on issues of equality of educational opportunity and social justice within education policies related to diversity and poverty, such as affirmative action.
She was a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow for 2004-2006 and recipient of the Kellogg Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good’s “Rising Scholar” Award.
In addition, she is the author of Embracing Race: Why We Need Race-Conscious Education Policy (Teachers College Press, 2002), winner of the American Educational Studies Association Critic’s Choice Award. In an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the roots of the political debates over race-conscious policies that profoundly affect meaningful opportunities for higher education, she is currently examining the nature of persistent moral disagreement over affirmative action policies in the United States and Brazil, as well as the relationship between moral disagreement and theories of justice.
Select Publications
- Moses, M.S. (in press). The Diversity Rationale: The Intellectual Roots of an Ideal. Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly.
- Moses, M. S. (2006). Why the Affirmative Action Debate Persists: The Role of Moral Disagreement. Educational Policy, 20(4), pp. 567-586.
- Moses, M. S. & Chang, M. J. (2006). Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Diversity Rationale. Educational Researcher, 35(1), pp. 6-11.
- Moses, M. S. & Gair, M. (2004). Toward a Critical Deliberative Strategy for Addressing Ideology in Educational Policy Processes. Educational Studies, 36(3), 217-244.
- Moses, M. S. (2004). Contested Ideals: Understanding Moral Disagreements over Education Policy. Journal of Social Philosophy, 35(4), 471-482.
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Affirmative Action in Brazil and the United States:
Understanding the Moral Foundations, Disagreements, and Imperatives
My research centers on a central question: How is it that those on either side of affirmative action debates share significant moral ideals yet endorse different policy prescriptions? In a related vein, how are important ideals like equality, liberty, opportunity, diversity, and merit conceptualized within the debate? It brings philosophical, conceptual, and document analysis to bear in investigating the moral disagreement over affirmative action in higher education admissions in Brazil and the United States. Recent events in each country have brought the issues of social and racial inequalities in higher education access and attainment to the forefront of higher education policy discussions. In light of the advent of affirmative action policies in some universities in Brazil in 2001 and the 2003 United States Supreme Court rulings in the University of Michigan cases, it’s an opportune time to examine the various facets of the disagreements over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States. Each national context under examination will serve to inform the other, as well as to inform related situations in other countries such as India and France.
This is a pivotal time for affirmative action policy in many different countries. Brazil is grappling with new quota systems, lawsuits, and public misunderstandings and backlash. The U.S. Supreme Court made a momentous ruling in the Michigan cases and is poised to make another with a court comprising different justices. India has been facing large student protests against quota systems and disagreements over the competing values of equality of opportunity and merit. France is dealing with an increasingly disenfranchised and discontent immigrant population calling for policies to combat educational inequalities. The political debates rage on. My research aims to make sense of the differing views on affirmative action that emerge despite ostensible agreement on key moral and political values and to shed new light on the moral disagreement over affirmative action and other race-conscious policies. I hope that equality of educational opportunity can come to be understood in a meaningful way, rather than just a slogan that can be easily endorsed by people with quite different policy ideas, constituting an important step in negotiating policies that honor educational opportunities for all students.
I hope to contribute collaborative efforts (both as part of the NCS group and during my exchange visit) to gain deeper understanding of the nature of the disagreement over affirmative action and related higher education policies by bringing political philosophy into a discussion of reshaping the moral landscape around affirmative action and other deeply contested education policy issues that affect equality of educational opportunity in various global contexts. Scholars no longer need to focus singularly on arguing for or against affirmative action itself. Such analyses will do little to advance the moral conversation around affirmative action. What is needed is a comparative examination of the underpinnings of the disagreements that goes beyond those arguments to get at the deeper moral and political conflicts that shape how we view what access, equity, and justice require of education policy.
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