Walter Allen’71 Takes on the Status Quo
但艾伦很幸运，1967年他高中毕业时，时代正在改变. 国家黑人学生奖学金服务和基金将在全国成绩测试中表现优异的非裔美国学生与那些希望增加黑人学生比例的大学进行配对.
That was just the beginning for Allen, 谁称自己是“黑人‘突击队’的先锋一代?.’ I rode the wave of ‘firsts’ into a distinguished academic career.”
艾伦决定去伯洛伊特大学，因为他以前去过威斯康星州一次，很喜欢那里, “但我是8月份去的，我没有意识到1月份就要到了.艾伦的第一个计划是研究海洋生物学——这个计划“在生物化学的海岸上坠毁了”,” he wryly notes. “我来自一个非常薄弱的学术背景，并且被安排在一个非常严格的学习计划中. I was also playing football and had a full-time job. I stumbled very seriously that first semester.”
He passed biochemistry, but barely (as a sign of his persistence, he retook the class his senior year and received an A minus). 然后，他报名参加了布莱克·希尔(Blake Hill)的课程，他是一位“才华横溢的年轻教师”. 她在我身上发现了一些东西，培养了我，我被社会学所吸引.”
With help from some key professors, 艾伦申请并被芝加哥大学录取，并获得了博士学位.D. in sociology. 毕业于北卡罗来纳大学和密歇根大学, 他于1988年加入加州大学洛杉矶分校社会学系，现在是教育研究生院的艾伦·默里·卡特高等教育教授 & Information Studies.
The overarching theme for all his research, he said, 是为了展示和对抗美国根深蒂固的隔离和不平等的种族隔离——从一个人出生的医院到受教育的机会，再到社区的清洁和安全.
“我的整个职业生涯都在记录这些问题的真实存在，”他说.
艾伦很快就说，自从他还是个孩子的时候起，这个国家就发生了变化——当然也从他父母在南方当佃农的时候起.
“我非常庆祝我们在克服种族偏见方面所做的改变, ethnicity, and gender,” he says. “But we have so much further to go.”
艾伦的主要事业之一是1998年成立的“选择项目”, a research initiative. 该项目研究了加州的非洲裔和拉丁裔学生如何, who historically have low college attendance and graduation rates, are affected during key transitional points in their education.
The project focuses on creating a college-going culture through elementary and secondary school; basic information for high schoolers about what college is and represents; identification of the individual, family, and institutional characteristics that ensure most of these students have a successful college experience; and better access for African Americans and Latinos to graduate schools in law, medicine, and other disciplines.
艾伦的一些最著名的工作集中在法学院的多样性上. 2003年，最高法院做出了一项具有里程碑意义的裁决，支持密歇根大学法学院的平权行动招生政策。一年后，艾伦作为专家作证，他和北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的三位同事成立了“教育多样性项目”. The first step was to gather data from about 8,68所法学院的000名学生，并对法学教授进行采访.
2007年，他们还与一部分参与者进行了焦点小组讨论, when the classes graduated, they did a follow-up survey and conducted interviews with law professors.
They found, “diversity matters in a big way,” Allen says. “We have black-letter law, but when you start discussing individuals, 并将人类的背景，解释和观点融入其中, it becomes so much more important to bring diversity to the table.”
That may seem like common sense, but as Allen says, “social science is important because then we have empirical evidence. It’s not just a matter of opinion.”
More heterogeneous law schools, he says, 从律师选择的职业——公共利益而不是公司法——在所有方面都有所不同, for example—to choices in law firms.
该项目正在寻求额外的资金，以进行为期10年的后续研究，看看多样性的影响是否还在继续.
Most recently, Allen has expanded his work into an area that may seem unusual, but rather is a natural evolution from his underlying concerns: race, justice, and equality. He is part of the Central African Biological Diversity Alliance, working with ecologists, environmental scientists, 进化生物学家要保护热带森林，同时也要拯救附近与这片土地有着悠久历史关系的人们的生活方式,” he says. “If you declare it a conservation area and off limits, where will the people get the game meat to supplement their meager diets? What happens if you ban access to ancestral burial grounds?”
该组织是由美国国家科学基金会资助的一个五年项目的第三个年头.
Besides his research, 艾伦自豪地指出，他的教学和培养的本科生和研究生继续并扩展了他的工作. He has received numerous awards for his research and teaching.
“我在伯洛伊特的所有经历都与我现在所做的有关——进步的社会变革方向, working across disciplines, and a clear sense that the work should have relevance in the real world,” he says.
他同时承认，“我们正处于一个不平等问题严重的时期,” he also knows that the nature of change is that it ebbs and flows.
“当你挑战权力、特权和现状时，”他说，“现状会反击.”
Alina Tugend is a freelance journalist based in New York.
