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Testimony
June 27, 2001
Testimony Before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate
Russell Senate Office Building, Room 301
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MI Senior Fellow Abigail Thernstrom Named to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
TO: MI Friends
FROM: Lawrence Mone, President
DATE: January 8, 2001
RE: MI Senior Fellow Abigail Thernstrom Named to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
The Manhattan Institute is proud to announce that Senior Fellow Abigail Thernstrom has been appointed as a commissioner to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. The Commission will be holding hearings this week in Florida on alleged black disenfranchisement during the election.
She currently serves on the Massachusetts Board of Education, a post she was appointed to by Governor William Weld in 1993. She was also a principal organizer of the “Citizens’ Initiative on Race and Ethnicity,” which will be publishing an anthology of 25 essays on race and ethnicity by leading scholars this spring, Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom’s lengthy review of William G. Bowen and Derek Bok’s much-noticed book, The Shape of the River, appeared in the June 1999 issue of the UCLA Law Review. The Thernstroms are currently working on a new book, Getting the Answers Right: The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement and How to Close It.
Dr. Thernstrom has been working with the Institute since 1993 on race and ethnicity issues. In 1997 she co-authored America in Black and White, One Nation: Indivisible (Simon & Schuster) with her husband, Stephan Thernstrom, the Winthrop Professor of History at Harvard University. The New York Times Book Review named it as one of the notable books of 1997. President Clinton chose her as one of three authors to participate in his first “town meeting” on race in Akron, Ohio on December 3, 1997. Abigail also participated in a White House discussion on racial issues with the President on December 19, 1997.
Her 1987 work, Whose Votes Counts? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Harvard University Press), was named the best policy studies book of that year by the Political Studies Organization. The book also received the American Bar Association's Certificate of Merit, the Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book on race and ethnicity; and the Benchmark Book Award from the Center for Judicial Studies.
Abigail Thernstrom received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government, in 1975. She and her husband reside in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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