The August 2022 paper out of Georgetown University's Center on Poverty and Inequality contends that by "removing barriers to degree access and completion," segregation across fields of study can be alleviated and "existing labor market segregation by race and gender" can be disrupted.
"It is also essential for increasing earnings and upward career mobility for millions of workers, especially Black and Brown workers, women workers, and other structurally excluded workers," the report concludes.
Matt Lamb is associate editor of The College Fix. He argues that the proposed policies – which include racial and gender quotas, reparations, mandatory "anti-racist" training, and a "feminist approach" to teaching – are not the answer.
"Certainly, if someone is discriminating on the basis of race or gender, there are laws that should be enforced – and those schools should be held accountable," he tells AFN. "But calling for quotas and affirmative action and not letting in white students or male students is illegal. There are laws against it."
He warns that even though the Georgetown report is extremely radical, it shouldn't be simply dismissed as something that will filed away and forgotten.
"I would not be surprised if this is later cited in some sort of congressional testimony or some sort of law coming out of California, New York, or Washington or one of those places," Lamb states. "And that's why it's important that we do report on this [and] that we raise these questions."
And The College Fix did raise some questions with UCLA law professor Richard Sander, who is critical of the report. Sander told The Fix it "ignores a long line of unrebutted research showing that to a very large degree, simplistic past remedies for underrepresentation in STEM fields [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] are a major contributor to current disparities."
According to The Fix, Sander is a leading proponent of the "mismatch theory" – the idea that affirmative action hurts the people it is supposed to benefit by pushing them into programs for which they are not academically prepared.
