Category Archive

This recent Wall Street Journal article, “The Trouble with Diversity Initiatives,” covers a new study that identifies problems with using affirmative action in corporate hiring and promotion.  The article notes that, according to the study, companies “looking to diversify their employee ranks should brace for a potential backlash.” Rachel Feintzeig reports:  A meta-analysis from researchers at New York University, University of Michigan and George Mason University traces the roots of stigma that can erupt in organizations that implement affirmative action policies to attract women and racial minorities. The study dug into 45 previous pieces of research to identify the mechanisms that …

Last week, the New York Times’s Linda Greenhouse predictably praised the recent court of appeals decision upholding the University of Texas’s use of racial and ethnic preferences in admissions.  The Washington Post has now followed suit.  But as I noted in response to both:  “The court’s analytical framework is obviously wrong: The purported educational benefits of adding racial preferences … were not demonstrated, and there was no discussion at all of the costs of such discrimination. The alleged benefits are dubious and trivial, while the costs are many, heavy, and undeniable. To give just one example of the latter: Despite …

Last Saturday was the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, and that prompted many on the Left to claim that any celebration should be tempered by a recognition that “segregation” and/or “resegregation” continues.  Below is an op-ed I wrote for USA Today that explains why these claims are specious.  Center for Equal Opportunity board member Abigail Thernstrom and her husband Stephan likewise set the record straight in their excellent Wall Street Journal op-ed here. On May 17, we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. And that is …

Our friends at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy recently asked me to write for them on the latest developments in the fight to end racial and ethnic preferences in university admissions.  Here’s what I said: Racial preferences have never been popular among most Americans, and in fact they are becoming less and less popular.   One reason is the simple passage of time. Many people felt viscerally that some sort of affirmative action made sense 50 or 60 years ago, when Jim Crow had been the law until quite recently and the beneficiaries of preferences would be individuals …

Here are some thoughts on recent news stories related to race and higher education.  First, as we await the Supreme Court’s decision in Schuette v. BAMN, consider how that case might fit in with the latest news from California on SCA 5.  That is, in the Schuette case, it is being argued that a Michigan ballot initiative banning, among other things, racial preferences in university admissions ought to be struck down as antiminority.  And yet, in California, the SCA 5 legislative effort to repeal the ban there on racial preferences in university admissions was withdrawn because of pressure from a racial …

“California voters will not be asked this year to decide whether to roll back California’s ban on racial preferences in college admissions, Assembly Speaker John A. Perez,” announced this week, according to the Sacramento Bee.  The story notes, “The move came a week after three Asian-American state senators — who had previously supported putting the question to voters — asked Perez to put a stop the measure ….” That’s great news, and here’s hoping the withdrawal is permanent.  The fact that what doomed the measure was opposition from Asian Americans is important, too, with a caveat.  An important problem with …

In case you missed it, I coauthored an op-ed this week in The Wall Street Journal on the unhappy 25th anniversary this month of a loophole left in an otherwise good Supreme Court decision, striking down racial and ethnic preferences in government contracting.  Here it is: In a landmark case 25 years ago this month, the Supreme Court struck down a municipal contracting program that gave preferential treatment to companies owned by racial and ethnic minorities. City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. was a welcome decision for equality under the law—but Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s 1989 opinion unfortunately left …

FIRST MODEL BILL (antidiscrimination based on California’s Proposition 209) CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 2014 (a) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. (b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section’s effective date. (c) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. (d) Nothing …

The federal government’s attempt to coerce private and public employers into ignoring the criminal records of prospective employees is not faring well.  Greg Abbott, Texas’s state attorney general, has filed an excellent complaint, challenging the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “enforcement guidance” that tries to limit employers’ use of criminal-background checks in hiring.  And in EEOC v. Freeman recently, a federal district court threw out the government’s own lawsuit, noting that the “careful and appropriate use of criminal history information is an important, and in many cases essential, part of the employment process of employers throughout the United States” — …