Böcker av Nicholas Lemann

How to make post-SAT American higher education fairerIn the 1930s, American colleges and universities began to screen applications using the SAT, a mass-administered, IQ-descended standardized test. The widespread adoption of the test accompanied the development of the world's first mass higher education system-and served to promote the idea that the United States was becoming a "meritocracy" in which admission to selective higher education institutions would be granted to those who most deserved it. In Higher Admissions, Lemann reflects on the state of America's aspirational meritocracy and the enduring value and meaning of standardized testing. Lemann writes that the anticipation of the Supreme Court's 2023 decision banning affirmative action, plus the Covid pandemic, led hundreds of universities to stop requiring standardized admissions tests; now a handful of elite universities are reinstituting test requirements. The country is preoccupied with the admissions policies of the most selective universities, but Lemann redirects our attention to an alternate path that American higher education could have taken, and can still take-one that emphasizes selective admission less and a significant upgrade of the entire higher education system more. Lemann argues that to improve the state of higher education overall, we should focus not on the narrow chokepoint of admission to highly selective colleges but on efforts to create as much meaningful opportunity for flourishing in our vast higher education system for as many people as possible. The book includes thoughtful and challenging responses from Marvin Krislov, Patricia Gándara, and Prudence Carter.

From The Federalist to Citizens United, a bestselling historian presents key writings on five crucial questions confronting American democracy today Amid the frenzied overload of 24-hour cable news and incessant social media, at a time when many of us fear for the future of our democracy, it is becoming harder and harder to think clearly about politics. American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions provides an alternative for those who want to step back and look to the past for inspiration and guidance.   Edited with perceptive and provocative commentary by bestselling historian and journalist Nicholas Lemann (The Promised Land, Transaction Man), the book presents key writings from the American past that speak to five contemporary flashpoints in our political landscape: race, gender, immigration, and citizenship; opportunity and inequality; the purpose and powers of the federal government; money, special privilege, and corruption; and protest and civil disobedience. Some of the selections are well-known—George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4th of July,” Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham Jail—while others will be new to many readers—Horace Mann’s argument for public schools as a means of fighting inequality, Jane Addams’s perceptive analysis of gender and social class in charity work, Randolph Bourne envisioning a “Trans-National America.”   American Democracy presents a remarkable range of insightful and eloquent American political writing, while serving as an invaluable resource for concerned citizens who wish to become better-informed participants in the ongoing drama of our democracy.