The mission of the Civil Rights Project is to help renew the civil rights movement by bridging the worlds of ideas and action, to be a trusted source of intellectual capital within that movement, and to deepen the understanding of the challenges that must be addressed to achieve racial and ethnic equity as society moves through the great transformation of the 21st century.

The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) is co-directed by Research Professors Gary Orfield and Patricia Gándara and housed in the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies. Founded in 1996 at Harvard University by Orfield and Christopher Edley, Jr., CRP’s purpose is to create a new generation of research in social science and law, on the critical issues of civil rights and equal opportunity for racial and ethnic groups in the United States.

CRP has convened dozens of national conferences and roundtables; commissioned over 400 research and policy studies; produced major reports on college access, education law, graduation rates, school discipline, multilingual learners, segregation and diversity; and published more than twenty-five books  – with other works in the pipeline. We partner with authors at universities and research centers across the country to monitor the success of U.S. schools in equalizing opportunity.