U of A professor Robert Maranto was recently appointed to the Arkansas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

The Arkansas Advisory Committee was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as a bipartisan, independent, investigative federal agency. Its mission is to improve the enforcement of federal civil rights laws and advise the development of national civil rights policy. The committee aims to play an important role in the advancement of civil rights by means of objective and widespread investigation, research and analysis of issues that concern the federal government and the public.

Committee members have recently examined education funding, school discipline disparities, policing practices, mental health and the criminal justice system, legal financial obligations, human trafficking, fair housing, hate crimes, voting rights, and collateral consequences of criminal convictions.

Maranto, a professor in the Department of Education Reform in the College of Education and Health Professions, is a first-generation college graduate on his dad's side and a first-generation high school graduate on his mom's side. He grew up in an inner suburb of Baltimore that was working class, diverse and integrated, which shaped his approach to civil rights issues.

Maranto is a strong believer in the contact hypothesis developed in psychology and practiced in successfully integrated organizations like the U.S. Army.

"In too many civilian organizations too much of our approach to intergroup relations is formal and bureaucratized. We do training, we check boxes, we say the words we are told to say, but when you study the empirical impacts, you find those interventions don't change how people feel about each other or improve how people interact with each other," he said. "In contrast, if you have people of relatively equal talent interacting in safe environments for a common purpose, intergroup understanding and comfort grow over time."

Maranto has published widely on schools which close academic achievement gaps and on successful police departments.