Author Profile

Richard Sander

Richard Sander is an economist and law professor at UCLA, where he has taught since 1989. He has always been interested in trying to understand the causes of urban and racial inequality, and in evaluating policies aimed at alleviating inequality. During eleven years in Chicago (1978-1989), he worked as a community organizer on the South Side, coordinated an evaluation of an innovative community bank, and (in graduate school) studied the effect of fair housing policies on discrimination and segregation. In Los Angeles during the 1990s, Sander served as president of one large fair housing group, and founded another. Working with Los Angeles city officials, he led a study of a proposed living wage ordinance and helped lay the factual and policy groundwork for the City's subsequent adoption of what was, at the time, the nation's most ambitious living wage law.

Sander became interested in affirmative action through his experiences at UCLA. In 1995 he co-authored a large, longitudinal evaluation of seven academic support programs, which distinguished two programs that worked well from five that were ineffective. In 1998 he published the first detailed evaluation of a class-based affirmative action program, adopted at UCLA after voters passed a ban on racial preferences in 1996. As a co-leader in 1999-2004 of a national study of lawyers known as After the JD, Sander saw it would be possible to evaluate the national effects of racial preferences on student learning in law school, and published a study of these effects in the Stanford Law Review in early 2005. This work led to a national collaboration with other scholars evaluating the scale and effects of preferences across higher education, and the publication of Mismatch, with Stuart Taylor, in 2012. In collaboration with the First Amendment Coalition and several lawyers interested in data access, Sander filed a lawsuit against the State Bar of California in 2007, seeking access to a comprehensive database on bar outcomes; in Sander v. State Bar (2013) the Supreme Court of California ruled that a broad "common law" right of citizen access to government databases exists. Sander is currently working on a book about the effects and weaknesses of current fair housing policy.

Articles by Richard Sander

Law-School “Mismatch” Is Worse Than We Thought

Mar 15, 2023 · Richard Sander

Eighteen years ago, I published an article in the Stanford Law Review which documented for the first time the enormous breadth and scale of race-based admissions preferences in law schools. … Continue reading “Law-School “Mismatch” Is Worse Than We Thought”

Even Liberals Should Be Skeptical of Racial Preferences in Higher Education

Oct 28, 2022 · Richard Sander

In most public discussions, “affirmative action” in higher education is treated as one of the core issues that divides liberals from conservatives. It is rare in public life to hear … Continue reading “Even Liberals Should Be Skeptical of Racial Preferences in Higher Education”

Whither Race-Neutrality in California?

Aug 26, 2020 · Richard Sander

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 by an impressive 56-to-44 percent majority. Prop 209 amended the state’s constitution to prohibit the granting of preferences based on race or gender. … Continue reading “Whither Race-Neutrality in California?”

Why “Mismatch” is Relevant in Fisher v. Texas

Dec 9, 2015 · Richard Sander

Affirmative action is before the Supreme Court again this week, as it rehears arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas. Perhaps the most important question about racial preferences is one that’s not directly raised by the case: do they even work? Do they help underrepresented minorities to achieve their goals, and foster interracial interaction and understanding on elite campuses? Or do large preferences often “mismatch” students in campuses where they will struggle and fail?