Category Archive

Last week, we honored Martin Luther King Jr., whose most famous quote is, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This year marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s death at the hands of an assassin; it is also the 50th anniversary of the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act. So there’s some irony in a recent news story: A Fair Housing Act lawsuit has been settled, with each plaintiff getting …

Senator Mike Lee’s Social Capital Project turns its attention to the fraying fabric of society. The rise of unwed childbearing began in the 1960s and continues still today, with 40 percent of children born out of wedlock. In this recent piece for The Weekly Standard I wrote about Senator Lee’s research on this and other aspects of “associational life.” Who can doubt that children of stable, married couples have better life prospects than children born to single mothers?   Senator Mike Lee, the Utah Republican, is vice chairman of the little known Joint Economic Committee. Congress created the committee in …

President Trump has announced that he is renominating liberal activist Chai Feldblum to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “Why in the world is he doing that?” asks Powerline, and that’s a very good question (my only quibble with Powerline’s analysis is that this is not exactly being done in the dark of night, because I first saw it on the White House website). The EEOC enforces the antidiscrimination laws for the entire private sector, so it’s an extremely powerful agency, and all the more so because it operates largely outside of executive-branch control. I noted last summer that the …

“Guidance documents” are supposed to inform and explain. But Obama used them to regulate. Jeff Sessions is undoing that legacy, as I explained in an article published earlier this month at weeklystandard.com, which you’ll find below. The Obama administration used “sub-regulatory” methods in a number of areas, not least school discipline. There the Education Department sent a letter to state and local education officials declaring that it would enforce “disparate impact” in school discipline cases investigated under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thus, a policy resulting in disciplinary outcomes that were disproportionate by race and ethnicity …

On Thursday this week, December 14, Center for Equal Opportunity research fellow Althea Nagai, along with CEO president and general counsel Roger Clegg (that’s me) and the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald, will appear on a panel at the Heritage Foundation.  The occasion is the publication of a new paper by Dr. Nagai on the topic of “unconscious bias.”  The panel discussion is on “Why Claims of Unconscious Racism Fall Flat: Debunking the Implicit Association Test.” To elaborate:  Psychologists have developed a test that purports to uncover unconscious racism. Supposedly tapping into the subconscious, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures …

The Center for Equal Opportunity recently prepared for a donor a one-page summary of our achievements over the past twelve months, and I’d like to share it with you.  It makes clear that CEO, a very lean organization, really punches above its weight, and gives our supporters unmatched bang for the buck. 2016-2017 CEO Activities Report In addition to the Center for Equal Opportunity’s speaking on campuses and other venues, media outreach, and general research and writing (in National Review Online, Commentary Magazine, The New York Times, and other magazines, newspapers, and publications), here are just a few highlights of …

Happy Thanksgiving, CEO supporter!  One of the things we’re most thankful for here at the Center for Equal Opportunity is the kind and constant letters, phone calls, and emails we receive from all over this great country, supporting us in our work. Here’s an example:  We were recently contacted by a resident of Erie, Pennsylvania, who reached out to us because she remembered that we frequently challenge on a national basis the politically correct narrative that blames all racial disparities on racial discrimination.  I’m including her email to us below – it’s very well done, and she makes many of …

North Carolina governor Roy Cooper (D) announced last week a statewide goal of 10 percent for government contracting with minority-owned firms (defined by race, ethnicity, sex, and disability). He’s not alone with such nonsense; indeed, New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has set a goal of 30 percent in his state. Now, it’s good to make sure public contracting programs are open to all, that bidding opportunities are widely publicized beforehand, and that no one gets discriminated against because of skin color, national origin, or sex. But that means no preferences because of skin color, etc. either — whether it’s …

Writing this for The Weekly Standard, I was struck by just how well-crafted were Scalia’s own speeches. With the good writers, a reader waits for a surprise—a deft choice of words, an illuminating metaphor, some shrewdly placed humor. Dip into Scalia Speaks and you’ll have many such surprises. BY TERRY EASTLAND Justice Scalia was a terrific writer. And he thought about the craft, and what it requires. A short speech titled “Writing Well,” given to a group of legal writers who were giving him a lifetime achievement award, is fantastic. In the speech, as recounted in the recently released book Scalia …

Once again we learn that, in Silicon Valley as elsewhere in Corporate America, there is no place for politically incorrect truth-telling. What’s more, what the law says is not even part of the conversation. The latest kerfuffle involves Apple’s vice president of “inclusion and diversity,” who made the following statement during a panel discussion: “There can be twelve white blue-eyed blond men in a room and they are going to be diverse too because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.” Well, talk about your mansplaining, and isn’t that just what you’d expect …