Category Archive

In writing this piece for The Weekly Standard, I was reminded of Scalia’s eloquent concurrence in the 1995 Adarand case, which concerned the constitutionality of race preferences in government contracting: “To pursue the concept of racial entitlement — even for the most admirable and benign of purposes — is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.” Published last week, Scalia Speaks is a collection of the justice’s speeches edited by his son Christopher and the …

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants college campuses to become what many of them once were—places of “robust debate.” That is a worthy project, and I wrote about it this week in The Weekly Standard. By the way, I recently joined the Center for Equal Opportunity as a senior fellow. “The American university was once the center of academic freedom,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in his speech at the Georgetown Law Center this week. It was “a place of robust debate, a forum for the competition of ideas.” But over the years it has become “an echo chamber of political …

Last week the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project released this paper prepared by its “Race & Sex Working Group” (love that name, and I’m proud to be a member of it). The paper critiques three areas of Obama administration overreach by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights: transgender bathroom and locker room access under Title IX; investigations by universities of sexual-assault and harassment claims, also under Title IX; and requirements that school-discipline policies not have a “disparate impact” on the basis of race, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. To its credit, the Trump administration has …

Following my email from last week, here are some additional thoughts on Charlottesville: First, liberals should condemn lawless and violent behavior by those on the Left, and conservatives should condemn lawless and violent behavior by those on the Right. There is a temptation when this is done on both sides to temper that criticism by adding a “But . . . ” — that is, to say, “Of course, it is wrong to kill the police, but we must recognize that black lives do matter,” etc., or “Of course, it is wrong to ram a car into a protestor, but many protestors on the …

If recent headlines over the last few weeks can tell us anything, it is that America needs to get serious, and quickly, about E pluribus unum. America has always been a multiracial and multiethnic country, and it is becoming dramatically more so. For a society like ours to work, our laws and institutions cannot treat Americans differently according to skin color and what country people’s ancestors came from. We cannot view ourselves and each other as something other than Americans first and foremost. Of course, America has had a sad history of ignoring this principle, and whenever it has, it …

Last week I wrote briefly about a new book by Jason Riley, False Black Power?  (Mr. Riley, by the way, recently joined the Center for Equal Opportunity’s board of directors.)  This week, as  a summertime treat, I’m sharing the excerpt from this book that was recently published by the New York Post.  Enjoy! *          *          * Why Obama’s Presidency Didn’t Lead To Black Progress Since the 1960s, black leaders have placed a heavy emphasis on gaining political power, and Barack Obama’s presidency represented the apex of those efforts. The assumption — rarely challenged — is that black political clout must come …

Professor Mark J. Perry has posted some important data that show graphically (in both senses of the word) the extent to which racial preferences are used in medical-school admissions. “Bottom Line: Medical school acceptance rates in recent years suggest that medical schools must have ‘affirmative discrimination’ and ‘racial profiling’ admission policies that favor black and Hispanic applicants over equally qualified Asian and white students.” And, as is almost always the case with university admissions (see numerous studies by the Center for Equal Opportunity here— scroll down), race is weighed not lightly but heavily indeed: For students applying to medical school …

There are five commissioner slots on the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. At the beginning of last week, only one was a Republican; three were Democrats, and there was one vacancy.  Last Saturday, on July 1, there opened up another vacancy, because this Democrat’s term expired. What this means is that, if the two vacancies are filled quickly, we could have a 3-2 Republican majority; if they are not, we will have a 2-1 Democrat majority. The EEOC enforces all the private sector antidiscrimination employment laws, so this is a big deal. Does the administration have anything in the works, …

This week finds us between Flag Day and the Fourth of July, so what better time to think about what it means to be an American and, in particular, what values all Americans should hold in common. Earlier this year, President Trump promised, “So in the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty, and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination.  We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our …