Hello, everyone watching and listening. Today I'm speaking with Professor Researcher and

Economatrician Peter Parsidiocano. We discussed the recent landmark decision by the Supreme Court

to end race-based affirmative action. How Peter's research was

instrumental in that outcome. Why merit has repeatedly proven to be the best indicator of success

and what merit is, by the way. How compassion is used to cloak racial discrimination

and what might actually yield results in service to the under-resourced communities

across the United States. Peter, let's start with this. Affirmative action has been in the

news a lot for a long time, but particularly in recent weeks, given the new Supreme Court decision,

I think we should first of all alert everybody watching and listening to who you are and

why people should consider you a valid source of information and what you do.

So, fill us in about who you are and what you do and why this is a topic of interest to you.

So, you know, I'm an economics professor, studies affirmative action in higher education

and sort of as a result of that, got the opportunity to be an expert witness in the two

students or fair admissions cases that were recently decided in the Supreme Court,

one with Harvard and one with UNC. And I took the cases in part because

you know, for someone who studies affirmative action, we've never had the data to really look at it

well. Universities typically hide their data, probably as a result of these lawsuits.

So, you know, there's a large gap in racial preferences between it being a tiebreaker and being

what somebody like a Brahmed Kendi might be in favor of of equal outcomes. So,

understanding exactly how big the preferences are to me would move us in a direction thinking

about optimal policy. Now, as it stands, you know, the way the rulings went, we're not supposed

to have affirmative action. I think universities are probably going to look for ways to get around that.

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