We are pleased to invite you to an event with Professor Jerome Karabel, Harvard alumnus and acclaimed author of “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton”. The title of his speech is: "Making the Familiar Strange: The Origins and Dynamics of Elite College Admissions in the United States." It will take place on:
Monday, June 1st, 2015
with drinks starting at 6 pm, followed by the talk and discussion, and a walking dinner
at the University Foundation
16, rue d’Egmontstraat, B - 1000 Brussels
The talk will focus on the admission process at the elite Universities in the United States. It will provide an account of the historical origins of the peculiar system of college admissions that exists in the United States today - a system in which the ability to kick, hit, or throw a ball or the accident of being the child of someone who attended a prestigious college significantly affects a student's chances of admission. It will then analyze the sources of the growth of the tremendous frenzy surrounding college admissions today -- a frenzy that emerged in the period between 1950 and 1965, but has radically accelerated in the period since 1980 -- reaching a point where 19 out of 20 applicants are now rejected at institutions like Harvard and Stanford.
Jerome Karabel is Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. The recipient of many awards, his books include “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton”, which received the Distinguished Scholarly Book Award of the American Sociological Association, and The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900-1985 (with Steven Brint), which received the Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association. Professor Karabel is the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Institute of Education. In 1993-1994 he was a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2009-2010, he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, where he was working on his current project, “Outlier Nation: The Roots and Consequences of American Distinctiveness.” He writes frequently for non-academic audiences in such publications as The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
If you would like to join us to this event, please confirm your participation before the deadline date of Friday, May 26, 2015 by using the form attached or a short email to this address: [email protected]. The price of the event is €30 for members and €40 for non-members. Please make the payment on our Club’s account as soon as possible to guarantee your registration. We would like to remind you that we do not reimburse cancellations after the deadline.
Bank account details – Harvard Club of Belgium
IBAN: BE02 0682 4432 4940 - BIC: GKCCBEBB
Communication: your name and date of event (01.06.15)
We hope you will be able to join us at this event, and look forward to seeing you there.
Sincerely yours,
Salomé Cisnal de Ugarte
President, Harvard Club of Belgium