RSF trustee Nicholas Lemann (Columbia University) has been named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ new Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education. The commission, whose members include national leaders in education, business, and government, will examine the current state of undergraduate education and project what the nation’s education needs will be by 2035. In support of this three-year initiative, the Academy has received $2.2 million in funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The commission will look at every type of postsecondary institution, including, for example, early college high schools, for-profit institutions, four-year universities, and community colleges. It will offer recommendations for addressing rising costs and for ways of financing postsecondary education that promote wide and equitable access for Americans of every socioeconomic background. Across all its efforts, the commission will pursue a greater understanding of the preparation that Americans will need to lead productive and fulfilling lives that contribute to the health of our country, its economy, culture, and democratic community.

Recently, Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina made headlines when video of a police officer pulling a black teenage student from her desk and throwing her to the ground went viral. The events sparked a national outcry over the use of police force in schools, and prompted the Department of Justice to begin an investigation into the incident.

While the Richland County police department has since fired the officer involved, the future of police presence in public schools remains unclear. RSF author and sociologist Carla Shedd—whose new book Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice explores in detail how marginalized youth navigate their interactions with law enforcement in and around their schools—spoke with several news outlets about the Spring Valley High incident. According to Shedd, schools play a crucial role in either reinforcing or ameliorating the social inequalities experienced by adolescents in city environments. As she told the Wall Street Journal, in many educational settings, black students are treated differently from white students when they act like teenagers. She added, in an interview with the Washington Post, “I talk about what the consequences are when young people are not given that developmental space to mess up, to act out or make mistakes like regular teenagers.”