Gary Orfield

With over 50 years of experience in education, Gary Orfield’s career demonstrates a commitment to research, collaboration, and activism that has significantly contributed to public policy. Orfield’s early interest in civil rights remains the cornerstone of his career, collaborating with interdisciplinary thinkers from the fields of political science, education, legal studies, and beyond to create lasting change through public policy. His key contributions involve research on many forms of racial segregation and his public advocacy efforts as an expert in various legal proceedings, including landmark Supreme Court cases on affirmative action. In his current work for the UCLA Civil Rights Project, Orfield’s focus is centered on immigration and policy related to the needs of language minority learners as he continues to collaborate with future generations of interdisciplinary educational scholars.