Dr. Liliana M. Garces is the W.K. Kellogg Professor in Community College Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Garces collaborated with New America’s Education Policy Program to raise awareness of the importance of affirmative action in higher education.
She holds courtesy appointments at the University of Texas School of Law and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Her scholarship broadly examines how legal and education systems shape educational opportunity and create inequality for historically marginalized student populations. Her projects to date have examined race-conscious policies and practices in postsecondary admissions, freedom of expression and racial equity on college campuses, and the use and influence of research in law. Her research has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute.
Her award-winning scholarship has been published in a variety of top peer-reviewed education journals, as well as law journals, policy reports, and books. She is co-editor of Racial Equity on College Campuses: Connecting Research and Practice (SUNY Press, 2022), Affirmative Action and Racial Equity: Considering the Fisher Case to Forge the Path Ahead (Routledge, 2015) and School Integration Matters: Research-Based Strategies to Advance Racial Equity (Teachers College Press, 2016). Over the years, her work has been featured in National Public Radio, The New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed., and other media outlets, and at various invited briefings at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
Combining her expertise in law and education, Dr. Garces has represented the education community in the filing of legal briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases that have played consequential roles in interpreting law around race-conscious policies in education. Most recently, she served as counsel and co-authored an amicus brief filed by 1,241 social scientists in support of Harvard’s defense of its race-conscious admissions policies in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023). Dr. Garces holds a doctorate in education from Harvard University, a juris doctor from the University of Southern California School of Law, and a bachelor of arts from Brown University.