“An Update on the Mess at Bowdoin” is the all-too-accurate title of this piece by KC Johnson at Minding the Campus. Professor Johnson summarizes the proceedings at an event this month, held by the Maine Heritage Policy Center and National Association of Scholars, that builds on NAS’s comprehensive study of political correctness at Bowdoin College; this month the focus was on what Bowdoin proudly calls its efforts to ensure that students there are taught to be proper “global citizens.” Speakers included Peter Wood, John Fonte, Michael Poliakoff, Susan Shell, and Herb London.
Here’s Peter Wood’s graceful essay on the conference. Center for Equal Opportunity board member Tom Klingenstein also attended; Tom, of course, was the prime mover behind the study in the first place, as you can read here.
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Eric Holder gave a speech last week in which he called for the automatic restoration of voting rights for felons once their sentences have been served. A few thoughts on this.
Attorney General Holder conveniently ignores the reason for felon disenfranchisement, namely that if you aren’t willing to follow the law, then you can hardly claim a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote.
We have certain minimum, objective standards of responsibility, trustworthiness, and commitment to our laws that we require of people before they are entrusted with a role in the solemn enterprise of self-government. And so we don’t allow everyone to vote: not children, not noncitizens, not the mentally incompetent, and not people who have been convicted of committing serious crimes against their fellow citizens.
The right to vote can be restored, but it should be done carefully, on a case-by-case basis, once a person has shown that he or she has really turned over a new leaf. The high recidivism rates that Mr. Holder acknowledges in his speech just show why that new leaf cannot be presumed simply because someone has walked out of prison; he’ll probably be walking back in, alas.
A better approach to the re-integration that Mr. Holder wants is to wait some period of time, review the felon’s record and, if he has shown he is now a positive part of his community, then have a formal ceremony — rather like a naturalization ceremony — in which his rights are restored.
Mr. Holder ignores all this, and plays the race card, by suggesting that there is a racial agenda behind these laws, which is simply not true. Too bad.
Read more about this issue on our website here and our congressional testimony here.
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Finally, the Washington Post reported last week that President Obama would “launch a significant new effort Thursday [February 13] to bolster the lives of young minority men.” That hasn’t happened yet, probably because of the weather rather than any second thoughts by the administration, but one can hope.
As I wrote when this proposal was alluded to in the State of the Union speech, why should a program be limited only to those of a certain color? There are disadvantaged young men (and women) of all racial and ethnic groups. This is bad policy, and unconstitutional.
