Category Archive

Not only will the Supreme Court be taking on the issue of racial and ethnic preferences in university admissions this fall when it hears Fisher v. University of Texas, but it may well be hearing important civil-rights cases involving voting and housing, too. 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 ACT We Need More Bills Like This 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act The Right Way to Interpret the Voting Rights Act

For a group of 4,000 Iranian refugees currently living in Iraq, a United Nations report this week could prove crucial in determining whether they will live as virtual prisoners in the desert or be able to build new lives in freedom elsewhere. The refugees are members of a controversial Iranian dissident group, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalk (MEK), which is currently listed on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. That listing itself is controversial. The United Kingdom, the European Union and a number of other nations have removed the group from their lists of terrorist organizations, and the U.S. may soon be forced …

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has now issued his final report on the scandal at Penn State University, but the question remains: How could so many decent people fail to act when presented with an eyewitness account of sexual abuse of a child? 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 ACT Roger Clegg testifies regarding H.R. 40 Politicized external review panels as unguided “diversity” missiles: California university administrators remain ultra-slow learners Congratulations to the New Haven firefighters!

Many conservatives were unhappy with the Supreme Court’s failure to strike down Obamacare, but here’s a silver lining:  The Left and the Mainstream Media had been doomsaying all year about how the Roberts Court was going to be willy-nilly striking down laws and upsetting legal precedent in pursuit of some far-right agenda.  Well, that didn’t happen.  So next term, when the Court hears Fisher v. University of Texas, raising the issue of racial preferences in university admissions, it will be much easier now for the Court to do the right thing and put an end to this nonsense.  (And, no, …

For all the talk of incivility in the Nation’s capital, the last week has restored my faith in the basic decency of the people who live there. Although the storm that hit Washington and the surrounding area June 29 has not received as much national attention as hurricanes, tornados, and other natural disasters usually do, the human toll has been high. In the Washington metro area alone, five people died in the storm and more than 20 have died subsequently from the heat, as hundreds of thousands suffered days without electrical power. But through it all, most people have behaved …

The University of Minnesota–Duluth has launched a bizarre campaign to raise awareness of “white privilege.”  The accompanying video has to be seen to be believed.  This is white guilt on steroids:  You have to be living in a different world if you believe that people who happen to have white skin (and who may or may not have had an easy time of it in life) ought to feel apologetic to anyone who does not share that skin color (and who may or may not have had a hard time in life).  Oh, well. Related posts: TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, …

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down two decisions this week that cry out for Congressional action. In upholding the constitutionality of most aspects of President Obama’s health care reform legislation and in reaffirming the federal government’s role in immigration policy, the Court’s decisions should be a call to action for Congress to pass new legislation on these two vital issues. It’s important to recognize that the decisions were narrowly tailored to deal only with constitutionality of the two laws at issue: the federal Affordable Care Act and Arizona’s S.B. 1070. Neither decision spoke to the wisdom of existing policy in …

With everyone waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision in the Obamacare case, I coauthored a piece in the Christian Science Monitor last week that explained why a case that will be decided next year also has important health implications – but, in its case, it’s the health of the country’s race relations that is at stake.  You can read the whole piece here, but here are some excerpts: The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide one of the most consequential cases in years – the challenge to the new federal health care law, often known as Obamacare. But right behind …

 Can the federal government adequately predict exactly how many mathematicians, engineers, biochemists, and inventors the United States will need twenty years in the future? I doubt many of us would answer yes. Yet, federal immigration policy does exactly that in allotting work visas for highly skilled employees.        Most of the debate over immigration has centered on low-skilled workers, especially the large population of illegal immigrants who have entered the country over the last two decades. But our legal immigration system is dysfunctional as well. The system primarily focuses on re-uniting foreign-born relatives with family members who are …

Last week, at the invitation of Maryland’s state advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Center for Equal Opportunity submitted testimony for a hearing on the subject of “Racial Disparities in Incarceration Rates” in Maryland’s state prisons.  It is becoming common to assert that such disparities – that is, the fact that some racial groups are “disproportionately” represented among prison inmates – somehow prove that the criminal justice system must be racist. Related posts: Roger Clegg testifies regarding H.R. 40 Did Juan Williams libel LU’s Hans Bader? Minority Access to Higher Education Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Racial Preferences …