This month we’re proud to feature the first publication from our new Justice and Journalism Fund.

Killing Affirmative Action: Would it really result in a better, more perfect Union?– a special report by Ellis Cose for USC Annenberg’s Institute for Justice and Journalism – is excerpted in the midterm elections issue of Newsweek, where Cose is a contributing editor and columnist.

Cose, whose eight books include The Rage of a Privileged Class, The Envy of the World and Bone to Pick, also wrote Beyond Brown v. Board: The Final Battle for Excellence in American Education, a report to the Rockefeller Foundation on the legacy of the historic U.S. Supreme Court desegregation decision.

We’re publishing Killing Affirmative Action, featuring it on our Web site and building on it in partnership with Cose in the coming months to stimulate reasoned public dialogue and in-depth journalism about the complexities of social equity and opportunity in America.

We invite you to engage with Cose’s insightful, in-depth reporting on social equity and opportunity in America and hope you will share your thoughts with us in our Online Forum.

The Justice and Journalism Fund, established with Ford Foundation funding this year, enabled us to partner with Cose on this project, funded by a collaborative of donors with an interest in social equity. Through the Fund, we will provide direct support to other in-depth journalistic work.

Meanwhile, we continue to offer reporting resources through fellowships, conferences and our Web site, including the “Just News” blog. We’re also part of an innovative partnership creating the new Center on the Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, the site of the opening conference for our next Criminal Justice Fellowships program.