The Soho Forum Debates

Should Affirmative Action End?

Jason Riley and Paul Frymer debate affirmative action and the Supreme Court.

|


Princeton University professor Jason Frymer and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley debate the resolution, "The U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 decision to dismantle affirmative action in American higher education marked a significant regression in the pursuit of racial equality."

Arguing for the affirmative is Frymer, a professor of politics at Princeton. He's the author of Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America and Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party.

Arguing against the resolution is Riley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He's also the author of several relevant titles, including The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences To Succeed and Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed, False Black Power.

The debate is moderated by Soho Forum director Gene Epstein.

In 2018, Gene Epstein retired from a 26-year stint as Economics and Books Editor at Barron's, where he wrote the weekly column, "Economic Beat." He's director of the Soho Forum, which he co-founded in 2016, a monthly debate series that receives fiscal sponsorship from the Reason Foundation.