Ralph Richard Banks

During his year at the Center, Ralph Richard Banks, who goes by Rick, will pursue two projects. He hopes to complete a book tentatively titled Mis-Educated: How College has Failed, and can Further, the American Dream. The core argument of the book is that making college the gateway to equality and opportunity accentuated the sorting and talent identification function of higher education, to the detriment of its learning and development function. Many of the current pathologies of higher education, the book argues, stem from this underlying shift. 

His second project sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and anti-discrimination law. The premise of the project is that as AI suffuses governmental and other institutional decision-making, the vast array of laws meant to secure equality will become increasingly irrelevant, unless their foundations and structure are rethought.

Banks is the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. A member of the Stanford faculty since 1998, he is also a professor, by courtesy, at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and is the inaugural faculty director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice.