Heartland, Affirmative Action

A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country in the World Guest: Sarah Smarsh, Author, “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country in the World” Growing up on a farm in Kansas in the 1980s and 90s, journalist Sarah Smarsh didn’t realize she and her family were part of the “working poor.” What she did know was that her parents and grandparents spent long days in fields and factories and on construction sites and still barely had enough to get by. All the while believing fervently in the American Dream that if you just work hard enough, you’ll get ahead. Only when Smarsh became the first in her family to get to college, did she realize she’d been sold a lie. Asians, Harvard and Affirmative Action Guest: Lee Cheng, Attorney, Private Practice. Fred Gedicks, Professor, BYU Law School You may have heard there’s a high profile lawsuit going to trial soon over Harvard’s admissions policies. A group of Asian Americans claims that Harvard’s use of race as one criteria in admitting students, discriminates against them. But aren’t affirmative action policies supposed to help minority students get access to elite schools? After all, these policies came about because of the Civil Rights Movement and many organizations representing people of color still fervently support affirmative action.