Myron Orfield
2005–2006 Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs

Myron Orfield, director of the Institute on Race and Poverty (IRP) and associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Law, has been named the 2005–2006 Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs. For more information about Orfield’s appointment, see the announcement in the Summer 2005 CURA Reporter (download article as a 371 KB PDF file)

Orfield plans to use the resources provided by his appointment to analyze the evolving legal authority and responsibilities of the Metropolitan Council in light of several ongoing or recently settled lawsuits against the Met Council, as well as state and federal court interpretations of similar metropolitan governance statutes in other jurisdictions. Orfield hopes to couple his analysis with recent demographic research on the Twin Cities metro area, both to benchmark the performance of our regional legal framework and to suggest how this framework might address racial and social segregation in Twin Cities schools and neighborhoods. An article on Orfield’s Fesler-Lampert research titled “Expanding Educational Opportunity Through School and Housing Choice” was published in the Summer 2007 CURA Reporter (download article, PDF file).

(Photo by Steve Schneider)