New York Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn and Harvard’s Danielle Allen on Journalism and Its Discontents

01/13/23 • 33 min

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Does objectivity exist? Is it possible for news organizations to cut through the noise of the digital age and get citizens the information they need to be responsible participants in democracy? How can journalists build trust with disenchanted readers on both the right and the left of the political spectrum?

Speaking to these questions are New York Times executive editor, Joe Kahn, AB ’87, AM ’90, and Danielle Allen, PhD ’01, Harvard's James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics. Their conversation, which took place at the Harvard Club of New York City last November, is moderated by Columbia University School of Journalism Professor Michael Schudson, AM ’70, PhD ’76.

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How Good Do Black Students Have to Be?

“You have to be twice as good to go half as far.” It's a maxim that Black and Brown Americans know well, particularly in their experience of the educational system. In recent decades, college preparatory school programs have sprouted up to give middle school students of color a better chance to compete and gain admission to elite private institutions like Exeter, Andover, Choate, and many others. From there, the thinking goes Black and Brown kids can make it to colleges like Harvard and then to successful and lucrative careers, addressing systemic inequalities in wealth and income.

Garry Mitchell wants to trouble the notion of this path as an unqualified good for students of color. An educator and GSAS PhD student who studies college prep school programs, Mitchell says that these initiatives often don't dispel the racist paradigm of twice as good, they institutionalize it. The cost to participants can be a loss of community and sense of themselves as they exist outside of majority white spaces. The cost to society, he says, is the perpetuation of systemic inequality.