The Civil Rights Project at Harvard is moving to the University of California at Los Angeles, along with its director, Gary Orfield, depriving the university of a prominent voice in the national debate about racial justice.

The 10-year-old center, which Orfield cofounded at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, has produced reams of influential research on inequality, particularly in education -- on the resegregation of schools, for example.

"I have been offered an extraordinary opportunity to continue and expand the work of the Civil Rights Project, at UCLA, in a setting of great interest for the future of race relations and civil rights," Orfield wrote in an e-mail notifying colleagues last week.
Orfield will be on leave from the education school starting next semester.