There’s an important article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today about two amicus briefs filed in the Fisher II case, which challenges the use of racial admission preferences at the University of Texas. The common theme in the two briefs — one filed by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, of Mismatch fame, and the other filed by Pacific Legal Foundation and joined by, among others, my organization, the Center for Equal Opportunity — is that universities are stonewalling when it comes to providing information relevant to their use of racial preferences. I might add that another common theme in …
Madness in the Groves of Academe
I recently participated, at ScotusBlog’s kind invitation, in its symposium on the Fisher II case, and you can read my contribution to it here. There were no surprises in the arguments made in favor of the University of Texas’s racial discrimination in student admissions, but I did want to address briefly one particularly outrageous claim, since I’ve seen it made elsewhere. The argument was (and variations on it have been) made that, if you oppose universities’ giving a preference on the basis of race or ethnicity, it follows that “if an applicant wrote an admissions essay about volunteering for an …
Good and Bad from Republicans
“We should not have a multicultural society.” So says Jeb Bush, and of course he’s right. Kudos to him for saying so, and let’s hope the other candidates quickly agree. We don’t all have to eat the same foods, and we should be a welcoming nation, but there is some common glue needed to keep our multiracial, multiethnic society together. Here’s my top-ten list of what we should expect from those who want to become Americans (and those who are already Americans, for that matter). The list was first published in a National Review Online column, and it is fleshed out …
The Center for Equal Opportunity on “Disparate Impact” at Cato
The libertarian Cato Institute was kind enough to ask me to contribute an article to its annual Cato Supreme Court Review, inviting me to write on the Supreme Court’s recent (and unfortunate) decision to allow “disparate impact” causes of action under the Fair Housing Act. So I thought I would excerpt some of that article for this week’s email, and have done so below. You can read the full article here. I should also note that last week I spoke at Cato about the case on a civil-rights panel. You can watch the event here (“Panel II: Civil Rights”); I’m …
Getting serious about racial discrimination
That’s the title I gave this essay, which I was invited to write for ScotusBlog and which was posted last week. Here it is: In my contribution to this symposium, I’m going to discuss how the Supreme Court should apply “strict scrutiny” to the use of racial and ethnic preferences in university admissions. I will assume here that the door will be left ajar for this kind of discrimination, but must note briefly at the outset that I think the door should be shut on it, as I discussed at more length in the symposium for Fisher v. University of …
Tom Klingenstein’s Excellent Idea
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 …
Pop Quiz
Who is the famous African American being quoted here?: [Although crime] is born of poverty, we must also realize that crime is generated by a lack of values that has largely gone unaddressed in our nation as a whole and in the black community in particular. Soaring unwed birthrates, absentee fathers, an aversion to work, an unwillingness to embrace societal standards and time-honored discipline — all these factors have contributed to the problems we must now confront. Choose from: A. Ben Carson, surgeon and presidential candidate B. Thomas Sowell, scholar and columnist C. Bill Clinton, our first black president D. …
At Length and Ad Nauseam
My email this week features two long quotes, and I’m warning you beforehand that neither should be read on an empty stomach. But you’ll see that at least I’m not being partisan. * * * Here’s the set-up for the first item: I’ve noted before that those bemoaning the “institutional racism” of Amerikkka seem to have very little idea of what it is they would propose as a corrective in 2015. They can’t ask for laws abolishing slavery or Jim Crow or prohibiting racial discrimination; they can’t demand an African American president or attorney general either. There was more evidence …
Crony Quota-ism
The Obama administration has figured out yet another way to push preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex: Convene a big White House conference and extract “diversity”commitments from corporations. The administration has done it twice this month already. Big business is terrible on this issue anyway, and is certainly not going to resist any pressure from the federal government. So everyone wins — except, of course, the principle of nondiscrimination, the law, and those who end up getting discriminated against in the name of “diversity.” * * * Allow me to elaborate, starting with the point that business is all-too-often happy …
“Black and Unarmed”
The Washington Post had a great big front-page story on Sunday, headlined “Black and Unarmed,” that analyzes fatal police shootings over the past year (that is, since Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri), focusing especially on ones where the person shot was, you guessed it, black and unarmed. A few observations: First, it was a little hard to get past the first paragraph, which calls burglary “a relatively minor incident.” Try telling that to anyone who has been home when someone’s broken into it, or even someone who’s gone through having a home broken into when they weren’t home — especially …