Tom Klingenstein — who, I am proud to say, is on the Center for Equal Opportunity’s board of directors — has an excellent idea that he discusses in his new essay at the Claremont Review of Books. Here’s the first paragraph:
I begin by offering the trustees of my alma mater, Williams College, a bit of advice: Establish a board level standing committee on free expression (COFE). Provide COFE with the staff and independence of the college’s outside audit firm. COFE’s purpose, to ensure free expression, is analogous to that of the audit committee. Free expression is at least as important as financial soundness, and there is no reason to believe that the former requires any less oversight than does the latter. To an “Eph” who claims there is no free speech problem at Williams, I ask two, admittedly barbed, questions: How could you possibly know? Do you recommend that Williams disband the audit committee?
An “Eph,” by the way, is the name given a matriculant at Williams College, in honor of its founder, Colonel Ephraim Williams. You learn something new every day.
An additional thought: A good chair for the school’s new COFE would be Bill Bennett (Williams class of ‘65).
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The Center for Equal Opportunity works closely with the two remaining conservative members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow. And, as it happens, each of them deserves a shout-out this week.
Ladies first: The Heritage Foundation last week published an outstanding new paper by Ms. Heriot, whose day job is as a law professor at the University of San Diego. The paper’s title is “A ‘Dubious Expediency’: How Race-Preferential Admissions Policies on Campus Hurt Minority Students,” and here’s the teaser: “Mounting empirical research shows that race-preferential admissions policies are doing more harm than good. Instead of increasing the numbers of African Americans entering high-status careers, these policies reduce those numbers relative to what we would have had if colleges and universities had followed race-neutral policies. We have fewer African-American scientists, physicians, and engineers and likely fewer lawyers and college professors.”
On to Mr. Kirsanow: I had written for National Review Online a short post on school discipline last month, and I’d now like to follow up with this link to an excellent letter that Mr. Kirsanow has written to Arne Duncan on the Obama administration’s bad law (“disparate impact”) and bad policy (with unintended consequences) in this area.
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Another item, which is not really in CEO’s bailiwick but which I thought was interesting nonetheless, involving something of a discrepancy in recent obituaries in the New York Times versus the Washington Post. It’s interesting, that is, that Times obituary last week of actor Dean Jones — most famous for his roles in various Disney movies — discusses his becoming a born-again Christian in the 1970s, his subsequent work in Christian-themed films (one of which my Sunday school class used), and his founding in 1998 of the Christian Rescue Committee — now the Christian Rescue Fund — “a support group for Christians, Jews and others who have been persecuted for their faith.” The Associated Press obituary, run by the Washington Post on the same day, is fairly lengthy, too, but doesn’t mention any of this. Score one for the Times.
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But only one, I’m afraid. There was also a front-page story in the business section of the New York Times last week, talking about recent efforts to increase the number of African Americans working in Silicon Valley. The gist of it is that there are a lot of people out there who might make good in the high-tech world, but they are either overlooked or don’t even consider entering that industry. Thus, people are beginning initiatives like the “Hidden Genius Project” to find these people.
I’m prepared to believe that there are undiscovered diamonds in the rough out there, but it’s a mistake to assume that such diamonds come in only one or two colors. There is, that is, no reason to exclude whites and Asian Americans from these efforts — assuming, of course, that the aim is actually to find the best qualified people, and not just to achieve a politically correct racial and ethnic mix through the use of quotas.
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The Center for Equal Opportunity hopes that you and yours had a wonderful summer!
Related posts:
TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACTSuggested Reading on Civil Rights IssuesRoger Clegg testifies regarding H.R. 40Did Juan Williams libel LU’s Hans Bader?