John J. Miller joins CEO board | Center for Equal Opportunity

The Center for Equal Opportunity’s board of directors met last week and voted unanimously in favor of John J. Miller joining the board.

John is director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College in Michigan. He writes for National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is also the author of several books, including The First Assassin, a historical thriller set during the Civil War, and The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football. And I should mention that, when I first came to CEO in 1997, John was already here, and I had the pleasure of working with him for a couple of years before he left to work full-time for National Review.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has called John “one of the best literary journalists in the country.” He is also president of the Student Free Press Association, a nonprofit dedicated to college journalism through internships and its news website, The College Fix. We’re delighted to have John on our board.

CEO’s other board members, by the way, are Linda Chavez (chair), Tom Klingenstein, Rosalie Pedalino Porter, Arch Puddington, and Abigail Thernstrom. An impressive group!

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One of CEO’s activities is visiting university campuses to push back against the politically correct multicultural nonsense that permeates academia these days. And so earlier this fall I participated in a debate on whether felons ought to be allowed to vote, sponsored by the Federalist Society at the University of Chicago law school.

I took the position that a felony conviction ought to result in disenfranchisement. After all, if you aren’t willing to follow the law yourself, then you can’t demand a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote. The right to vote can be restored to felons, but it should be done carefully, on a case-by-case basis after a person has shown that he or she has really turned over a new leaf, not automatically on the day someone walks out of prison. After all, the unfortunate truth is that most people who walk out of prison will be walking back in. And none of this is changed by the fact that a disproportionate number of felons happen to be African American.

You can now listen to the debate here. And you can read more about this issue on our website here and by taking a look at my congressional testimony here.

By the way, I visited a number of other law schools this fall, including the University of Alabama, William & Mary, and Samford University, at each of which I spoke against racial preferences in university admissions, a.k.a. affirmative action; next spring I’m already slated for the University of St. Thomas and Nova Southeastern University. And of course I spoke to other organizations this fall, like the Cato Institute, Birmingham lawyers’ chapter of the Federalist Society, national annual convention of the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation.

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Another of CEO’s many ongoing activities is monitoring the Federal Register each day for any mischief that the Obama administration is up to. Alas, we usually find something, and when we do we will send in a formal comment, and often publicize it. Just to give you an example, here’s the comment we sent in this week in response to this Federal Register item:

December 16, 2013

Dear Mr. Weiss,

We have a comment on the notice in today’s Federal Register (December 16, 2013, 78 FR 76136) re “Application for New Awards; College Assistance Migrant Program.”

Our concern is with the invitational priority to programs “Increasing the number and proportion of students prepared for postsecondary or graduate study and careers in STEM [i.e., Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics], with a specific focus on an increase in the number and proportion of students so prepared who are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM careers, including minorities, individuals with disabilities, and women.”

As you may know, it is generally illegal for the government to show favoritism or even use classifications based on race, ethnicity, or sex. See Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200, 227 (1995) (“all racial classifications … must be analyzed by a reviewing court under strict scrutiny”); Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718 (1982) (gender classifications require an “exceedingly persuasive justification”). See also Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 2000d (prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in federally funded programs). Indeed, such classifications and favoritism are “presumptively invalid” (see Personnel Administrator v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979)). We also note that Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), provides no justification for the focus here on race, ethnicity, and sex; there the Supreme Court cited the “educational benefits” of a diverse student body, but here the focus is on groups that are “underrepresented in STEM careers,” and there is no necessary connection, let alone a “narrowly tailored” one, between the two (nor any reason why a government agency that is not a university should be given any deference in concluding that there are “educational benefits” in any event).

Accordingly, unless there is some statutory requirement for this focus on increasing the numbers of “minorities” and “women” in this program, we request that there be no such focus.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Roger Clegg
President and General Counsel
Center for Equal Opportunity

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