Affirmative Action: In Conversation With OiYan Poon
Scholar and author OiYan Poon will lead a conversation about race, education, and leadership for a diverse democracy in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to strike down race-conscious college admissions.
The free hybrid event will take place Thursday, Feb. 1, 12:30 p.m. in the School of Education and Social Policy’s Annenberg Hall, Room G02, located at 2120 Campus Drive on Northwestern University’s Evanston campus.
Poon, who studies the racial politics of Asian Americans, education access, affirmative action, and admissions systems and practices, is co-director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative (CAF Co-lab). A multi-institutional partnership of faculty, researchers, and scholar-practitioners, the CAF Co-lab research how college admissions can be designed to advance equity.
Her upcoming book (May 2024) Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family, explores how Asian Americans are shaping the future of race relations through debates over education policies like affirmative action, using personal narrative and interviews of Asian Americans across the country.
Her previous book, Rethinking College Admissions: Research-Based Practice and Policy, which was coedited by University of Michigan professor Mike Bastedo, offers new ideas to transform the unequal structures and systemic norms of college-going in the U.S.
Poon is best known for working closely in partnership with leaders in higher education to advance race and class equity in college admissions.
In 2019, in collaboration with the advocacy group Admissions Community Cultivating Equity & Peace Today (ACCEPT), she co-led the Hack the Gates project, which convened researchers and practitioners in college admissions to begin reimagining college admissions systems.
She was a lead co-author of amicus briefs defending diversity and race-conscious admissions, submitted to federal courts, including the Supreme Court in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case.
After earning her bachelor’s degree at Boston College and master’s in education at the University of Georgia, Poon worked in multicultural student affairs. She was the first Asian Pacific American student affairs director at George Mason University and the first student affairs officer in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis.
Poon earned her doctorate in race and ethnic studies in education and graduate certificate in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Born and raised in Massachusetts to immigrants from Hong Kong, Poon now lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter.
More on Poon:
- Visit the College Admissions Future Co-Laborative
- Read her opinion piece “Test Free Admissions: Why Wait?” on Inside Higher Ed.