Press

WASHINGTON — As the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement across the nation continues to pose civil rights risks, The Leadership Conference Education Fund and the Center for Civil Rights and Technology today held a timely press briefing on the use of this technology and the real and potential harms it poses to historically marginalized communities.

WASHINGTON — The Leadership Conference Education Fund today released a robust and inclusive policy agenda — We Shall Not be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education. The policy agenda — which has been endorsed by the NAACP, National Urban League, National Women’s Law Center, and the Center for Law and Social Policy — consists of 100 recommendations at the federal, state, and institutional levels and lays out detailed, researched-backed policy mechanisms to ensure equal opportunity in higher education for all students.

WASHINGTON — Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, along with 14 national civil rights and education groups, published an updated policy brief urging the U.S. Department of Education to protect students, especially students of color, from predatory practices by for-profit colleges. The brief urges the Department of Education to robustly enforce the gainful employment rule, ensuring that the Higher Education Act fulfills its promise of education opportunity for all and provides critical protections to students of color, especially those enrolled in substandard education programs at for-profit colleges.

WASHINGTON — Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund released a report detailing current standards for collecting race and ethnicity data in all 50 states. The report — “Disaggregation Nation: A Landscape Review of State Race & Ethnicity Data Collection” — provides an unprecedented national overview of race and ethnicity data collection standards. It finds that while some states have made significant progress in collecting accurate, disaggregated race and ethnicity data, others are lagging behind and failing to collect data that meaningfully shed light on disparities that we know exist but cannot quantify. This research builds on The Education Fund’s work, in concert with state and national partners, to shed light on the power of equitable race and ethnicity data to help identify and address systemic inequalities and design targeted policies that uplift underrepresented communities.

WASHINGTON DC — Today, The Leadership Conference Education Fund launched an unprecedented initiative to create a fair, just, opportunity-rich, and rights-advancing future for all in the face of artificial intelligence with the creation of The Center for Civil Rights and Technology. The Center will serve as a convener, collaborator, and communicator on policy issues, ideas, and potential innovations that can advance, as well as protect, equity in society. Dr. Alondra Nelson — who served as deputy assistant to President Joe Biden and acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — will serve as a senior advisor on Civil Rights and Technology to the president and CEO, Maya Wiley.

DALLAS — The Dallas Office of Community Police Oversight (OCPO), Dallas Action, and The Leadership Conference Education Fund today released a report — “A Second Look: An Analysis of Persisting Disparities in Dallas Misdemeanor Arrests” — as a follow-up to a 2021 report that The Education Fund co-authored with OCPO. That report analyzed the disproportionate enforcement of misdemeanors on the city’s Black and Brown residents.

WASHINGTON – One year after the Biden administration released plans for agencies to advance equity, The Leadership Conference Education Fund is releasing “Data for Equity: A Review of Federal Agency Equity Action Plans.” “Data for Equity” — which makes eight specific recommendations about how federal agencies can improve the collection, analysis, and sharing of data — is the fourth in The Education Fund’s series of reports about civil rights data collection.

WASHINGTON – The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund announced today that Eunic Epstein-Ortiz has joined the organizations as the new executive vice president of communications.