Racial Discrimination in Education—Comparative Experience in the U.S. and Europe

Racial and ethnic discrimination in education exacts a terrible toll on children and adults by denying access to the very avenues that would assist them to become fully functional and motivated contributors to society. In the United States, despite decades of successful civil rights advocacy, discrimination and segregation in education persist, and in many areas are worsening. In European Union member states, recently arrived immigrants as well as ethnic minority European citizens are often shunted into inferior schools and classes, or denied access to the range of educational options available to non-minority Europeans.

To begin a comparative conversation on strategies for anti-discrimination legal advocacy in education, OSI's U.S. Justice Fund and the Open Society Justice Initiative invited the following speakers to reflect on their experiences:

• Lilla Farkas, leading European anti-discrimination lawyer from Hungary;
• Theodore Shaw, President of NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund;
• Eva Paterson, President of Equal Justice Society.

The discussion was moderated by James Goldston, executive director of the OpenSociety Justice Initiative. The event was designed to initiate a longer-term dialogue with the capacity to foster practical comparative learning and improved legal advocacy in both regions around racial and ethnic discrimination in a range of issue areas.