University relations
Robert Maranto
U of A Professor Robert Maranto was recently appointed to the Arkansas Advisory Committee of the US Civil Rights Commission.
The Arkansas Advisory Committee was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as a bipartisan, independent federal investigative agency. Its task is to improve the enforcement of federal civil rights laws and to advise the development of national civil rights policy. The Committee aims to play an important role in promoting civil rights through objective and comprehensive investigation, research and analysis of issues affecting the federal government and the public.
Committee members recently examined education funding, differences in school discipline, police practices, mental health and the criminal justice system, legal financial obligations, human trafficking, fair living, hate crimes, voting rights and the consequences of criminal convictions.
Maranto, a professor in the Education Reform Department at the College of Education and Health Professions, is a first-generation college graduate on his father’s side and a first-generation high school graduate on his mother’s side. He grew up in the Baltimore suburb, which was a diverse and integrated working class that shaped his approach to civil rights issues.
Maranto firmly believes in the contact hypothesis developed in psychology and practiced in successfully integrated organizations such as the US Army.
“In too many civil organizations, too much of our approach to intergroup relationships is formal and bureaucratized. We do training, we check boxes, we say the words we are told, but if you examine the empirical implications, you will find these interventions don’t change the way people interact with each other or improve the way people interact with each other, “he said. “In contrast, when people of relatively equal talents interact in safe environments for a common purpose, intergroup understanding and comfort grow over time.”
Maranto has published a lot about schools that fill academic performance gaps and about successful police forces.
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