Category Archive

Last Friday I was invited to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights regarding “environmental justice”—the peculiar idea that the legality of pollution should hinge in part on whether its victims are white or not.  There were several panels and the event lasted all day, but I was one of the very few conservatives who spoke.  Below is my slightly condensed testimony, with which the left-leaning Commission was not happy. Introduction Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Roger Clegg, and I am president and general counsel of the Center for …

Not on purpose, of course, but bear with me.  Last week there was a long, front-page story in the New York Times, showcasing the success that the University of Michigan has had in achieving student-body “diversity” without the use of racial admission preferences. On the article, three observations. First, the obvious point is that this is bad news for the University of Texas in the Fisher case, since it shows that such preferences are not “narrowly tailored” to the achievement of student-body diversity. (Whether schools ought to be trying to achieve student bodies of a predetermined racial and ethnic mix at all …

Over the holidays, you may have had the chance to watch one of my favorite movies, It’s a Wonderful Life.  Over a decade ago, that movie — along with the endless drumbeat of anti-America nonsense we always hear in every season both at home and abroad and which unfortunately does not seem to be diminishing these days — prompted me to write this column for National Review Online.  I hope you enjoy it, and all the best from me and the Center for Equal Opportunity.  Happy New Year! It’s a Wonderful Country A contemporary Christmas carol. Well, Clarence, we’ve got …

For my email this week, I thought I would share with you this lightly edited version of an op-ed that Joshua Thompson (of Pacific Legal Foundation) and I wrote for Forbes.  Josh and I also wrote an amicus brief for the Supreme Court in this case. This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which that school’s use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions has been challenged. Some may speculate that the recent protests over racial issues, at the University of Missouri and elsewhere, might deter the justices from issuing …

Dear CEO Supporter, We wanted to bring you up to speed on all of the important work we are doing at the Center for Equal Opportunity. Here is CEO’s activities report for the last year: Areas of CEO Interest Opposing Racial and Ethnic Preferences.  As America becomes an increasingly multiethnic, multiracial society—as, indeed, individual Americans become increasingly multiethnic and multiracial—a legal regime that sorts people by skin color and what country their ancestors came from, and treats some better and others worse on this basis, becomes increasingly untenable. Fortunately, the principle of colorblindness is frequently enshrined in the laws of …

I’m devoting my email this week to a review I recently wrote for the Federalist Society’s Engage magazine.  The review is of Carl Cohen’s excellent book, A Conflict of Principles: The Battle Over Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan.  You can find the full review here (it includes the footnotes I’ve omitted from this version).  Professor Cohen chronicles a long fight in which the Center for Equal Opportunity was involved every step of the way – and the book has kind things to say about us, by the way. *          *          * This book is important for anyone who …

Professor Gail Heriot, who moonlights as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, had an excellent Wall Street Journal op-ed last week that made two important points.  The first is that the “mismatch” that results from racial preferences in university admissions is an important factor in the relative dearth of African American graduates in the STEM disciplines.  The second is that, while some of the pressure to use these preferences is self-imposed, a lot of it is not — and, in particular, much of it comes from accrediting agencies. She calls on Sen. Lamar Alexander and Reps. John …

In this week’s email, I’d like to share with you an essay that I coauthored and that was published last week on National Review Online: Recently the acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Principal Deputy Attorney General Vanita Gupta, gave a very long speech for the “Community Policing Summit” hosted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey. The speech was a longer and more detailed version of remarks delivered repeatedly by Obama administration officials these days, so it is worth reading with some care. Given the most charitable interpretation, the speech presumes a moral equivalence between …

The University of California–Berkeley has announced a new “White Initiative,” designed to increase the number of whites at the school. Those numbers have gone down since voters in California passed a ballot initiative that forbids discrimination and preference in, among other things, public universities, including admissions. The new initiative aims to reverse this trend by increasing white applications and enrollment through, for example, encouraging white-only scholarship programs, to be funded by private donors. The university apparently believes that, by proceeding in this way, it is not discriminating or granting preferential treatment on the basis of “race” or “color” or “ethnicity” or “national origin,” …