FOCUS Presents: Documenting Privilege

On Tuesday, October 20th, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students hosted “Documenting Privilege” a FOCUS Speaker Series event featuring Dan-el Padilla Peralta ’06, associate professor of classics at Princeton University, and Anthony Jack, assistant professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Padilla Peralta’s bestselling memoir, Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League was released in 2016. Dr. Jack’s book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students
was named one of NPR’s Favorite Books of 2019. Undergraduate attendees were provided with a free copy of either of the panelists’ books, purchased locally from Source of Knowledge, an independent, Black-owned bookstore in Newark, New Jersey.
The online panel opened with an introduction from Kauribel Javier ’19, the Whig-Clio program coordinator, in which she described the panelists’ professional history and research interests. Dr. Padilla Peralta and Jack both focus on the intersection of race, socioeconomic status, and academic achievement, and their recent books served as a jumping-off point for the conversation that followed.