Hans Bader is a senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
A recent lawsuit illustrates yet again that the Biden administration makes false claims without evidence. On June 4, the Biden administration issued a notice calling for new federal policies about school discipline, in light of the fact that “students of color” are disciplined more often than “their White peers.” It cited a controversial report by […]
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The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was sued on Monday by the Bader Family Foundation, for illegally refusing to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. The Commission claimed that a FOIA request for the outgoing emails of two Commission officials over a six-month period was too non-specific to qualify as a FOIA request, because […]
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The progressive state of Oregon is getting rid of reading, writing, and math requirements for high-school graduation, in the name of helping “Latinx” and minority students. As Jazz Shaw notes, it’s doing this “based on allegations of racism.” The “governor’s deputy communications director said that dropping the requirements ‘will benefit Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, […]
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On July 15, a Reuters fact-check claimed that “many Americans embrace falsehoods about critical race theory.” But it is Reuters that embraced a falsehood, not the American people. Reuters denied that critical race theory teaches that “discriminating against white people is the only way to achieve equality,” saying that was a “misconception” promoted by “conservative […]
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“Columbia and other wealthy universities steer master’s students to federal loans that can exceed $250,000. After graduation, many learn the debt is well beyond their means,” notes the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports on Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts Film program, one of the worst examples, in an article titled “Financially Hobbled for […]
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Are schools guilty of racism just because they suspend more black students than white students? Federal courts often say no, because it could be the result of a higher rate of misbehavior by black students, rather than racism. Surveys and studies show black students misbehave at higher rates in school. But the Biden administration thinks […]
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The president of George Mason University wants to give minorities a big advantage in hiring until the faculty is as heavily minority as the school’s student body and the future, mostly non-white U.S. population. This is illegal, say lawyers and law professors. Indeed, GMU’s president, Gregory Washington, recognized that objection in an April 15 email […]
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In a misleading email to alumni, the leadership of Harvard University implied, without evidence, that police killed three people out of racism. It cited the “killings of Adam Toledo,” “Daunte Wright” and “George Floyd” in railing against the “evil of racism” and police killings of people “by virtue of the color of their skin.” “The […]
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The Biden administration is using federal money to get states to inject radical racial theories into children’s history classes. As Stanley Kurtz notes in the National Review: The woke revolution in the classroom is about to go federal…President Biden’s Department of Education has signaled its intent to impose the most radical forms of Critical Race […]
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President Biden nominated lawyer Kristen Clarke to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, even though she once said that whites are inferior to blacks, and she has long opposed civil rights for white victims of racial discrimination. “Melanin endows blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities,” while “most whites are unable to produce […]
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Can a state punish its school teachers for not having a progressive ideology? That’s what Virginia’s Board of Education appears to be doing. Its newly adopted “performance standard” for teacher evaluations is whether a “teacher demonstrates a commitment to equity and provides instruction and classroom strategies that result in culturally inclusive and responsive learning environments […]
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Today [article originally published on March 28, 2021] is the 15th anniversary of Duke University’s suspension of its Lacrosse team in response to false allegations that members of the team committed a racist gang-rape of a black stripper. The gang rape turned out to be a hoax. But long after DNA evidence and cell phone […]
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School systems and colleges now routinely subject students and staff to racist scapegoating under the guise of promoting “diversity” or “anti-racism.” Radio broadcaster Rob Schilling reports on one example in Virginia: the Albermarle County Public Schools’ hiring of diversity-trainer Glenn Singleton. Singleton’s firm got paid a whopping $15,000 just to give a one-hour seminar. Singleton […]
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At the University of San Diego, conservative law professor Tom Smith is being investigated for criticizing “Chinese” propaganda, based on the false premise that this constituted racial harassment of Asian-American students. If Professor Smith can be disciplined for criticizing China’s government, then I could have been disciplined as a student for criticizing Russia’s communist government […]
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A law professor at Georgetown University has been fired for pointing out that black students got lower grades in her classes. This was not due to racism. Black students get lower grades at selective colleges because they are admitted with lower grades and test scores than their non-black classmates, due to racial preferences in admissions […]
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Three professors have been wrongly suspended over Halloween costumes they wore over six years ago. One of them is being investigated for having dressed as a Confederate general. As the College Fix notes: Three University of South Alabama professors have been placed on administrative leave over Halloween costumes they wore and posed with at an […]
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George Mason University in Virginia plans to illegally give minorities a racial preference, until its mostly white faculty has the same racial balance as its more heavily non-white student body, which is more ethnically diverse than the average college. Under GMU’s draft “ARIE Task Force Recommendations,” GMU will “recruit, hire, and retain faculty” and “staff […]
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Why are progressives so angry at the police, to the point where a significant minority of them want to abolish the police? Because they vastly overstate the number of police shootings of unarmed black people, often by a factor of 40 or more—exaggerating police killings by around 4,000 percent. That leads some of them to […]
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America has moved to the left so rapidly that Europeans are now expressing alarm about it. As journalist Glenn Greenwald notes, “Obama-endorsed French President Emmanuel Macron has joined numerous French intellectuals & journalists in warning that ‘out-of-control woke leftism of US campuses and its attendant cancel culture’ poses a grave threat due to the social […]
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I am a lawyer with a “Juris Doctor” degree from Harvard Law School. But calling myself “Doctor” would be misleading, because I don’t practice medicine. Indeed, it would be insufferably pompous. As law professor Eugene Volokh notes, lawyers don’t call themselves “doctor,” even though the word “doctor” is in their degree. Jill Biden has an […]
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The Virginia attorney general’s office has ruled that the Loudoun County school system committed illegal racial discrimination by admitting fairly few black and Hispanic students to its selective schools, the Academies of Loudoun. For reasons that have nothing to do with racism, the Academies of Loudoun are much more heavily Asian than the Loudoun County […]
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Do you like being able to criticize progressive policies about race or gender, such as affirmative action? That freedom may soon disappear in workplaces, schools, and rental housing, if legislation backed by Democrats becomes law. A bill called the BE HEARD in the Workplace Act would redefine speech that previously was considered perfectly legal as […]
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The Loudoun County Public Schools are planning to impose illegal racial preferences in student discipline, and have already made changes to school admission policies that are being challenged in court. They also plan to restrict teachers’ out-of-school speech, by punishing them for speech that disagrees with school policies, and by punishing teachers who fail to […]
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The federal Education Department is investigating the University of Pittsburgh for free-speech violations and false statements, after the University took action against Professor Norman Wang for publishing an academic paper critical of race-based affirmative action. The University removed Wang as Program Director at its medical center solely due to his paper. The Education Department is […]
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A faculty coalition at Cornell University is calling for race-based hiring and promotions. What it is demanding violates two laws against racial discrimination, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and 42 U.S.C. 1981. That’s because Cornell has no justifiable rationale for using race in employment decisions at all, much less to the extent that […]
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This week, the Virginia Board of Education will meet to discuss a report that may promote destructive racial ideologies — the August 2020 “Report from the Governor’s African American History Education Commission.” James Sherlock laments “the fiercely negative approach to the teaching of African American history offered by the Governor’s Commission.” He says says its […]
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As lawyers like Barack Obama have noted, law school is already a year too long, with lots of nonessential classes. As a result, law students often graduate with over $150,000 in student-loan debt. Yet law students may soon be required to take more unnecessary classes. 150 law school deans have asked the American Bar Association […]
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An Illinois high school teacher was fired on July 16 for a Facebook post rejecting the idea of “white privilege.” That violated the First Amendment, even if some people viewed her Facebook post as racially inflammatory. Speech doesn’t become punishable just because it offends members of minority groups. For example, in Thompson v. Board of Education of Chicago (1989), […]
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The University of Pittsburgh has removed a program director at its medical center because he published a scholarly, peer-reviewed white paper discussing the pitfalls of affirmative action for black and Hispanic students. This violated the First Amendment, which protects even harsh criticism of affirmative action. The white paper was gentle in its criticism of racial preferences, merely […]
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Joe Biden released his “racial equity plan” on Tuesday. Some of it deals with racial issues, like a major expansion of affirmative action and lots of race-related government spending. But it also contains radical changes to America’s employment laws that have little to do with race. Under his plan, even the tiniest employers with only […]
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