Wenyuan Wu is Executive Director of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation. Twitter: @wu_wenyuan
Once again, the Washington Post misses the mark when it associates “zombie” CVS of Washington, D.C., or America’s shoplifting pandemic with the decline of liberal democracy. Ironically, torchbearers of modern-day progressivism are willfully oblivious to the fact that their illiberal ideology, not liberal democracy itself, is at the root of many societal problems, including urban […]
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Educational inequities, racial wealth gaps, health disparities, environmental racism … America’s race peddlers have invaded every aspect of our public life with their ongoing schemes of injecting race into various government programs, education policies, health initiatives, and so on. Alas, the never-ending race grift has descended on government housing policies. Since 2023, the San Diego […]
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The New York Times recently unveiled a fascinating shift in the landscape of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs. Instead of the overt focus on race and gender representation, a new trend of rebranding is emerging. Now, we see the rise of more innocuous-sounding initiatives like “culture surveys” and “performance training.” While opponents should rightfully […]
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These days, politicians and political pundits of a particular orientation like to fancy themselves as the spokesmen of science and reason. Often, rudimentary data points on disparities in a number of socioeconomic and political outcomes based on aggregate group labels are upheld as the unquestionable science that proves systemic inequities of some sort, which then […]
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Noah Webster, known as the Father of American Scholarship and Education, wrote in 1788: It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and […]
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When the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, bundled with the University of North Carolina (UNC), the higher education status quo latched on to one particular sentence in the conclusion: [N]othing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicants’ discussion of […]
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When the French-Spanish singer and songwriter Manu Chao released the song “Politik Kills” as the third single from his 2007 album La Radiolina, the artist was taking a jab at global capitalism, neoliberalism, and political conservativism of the West. He sings: That’s what my friend is an evidence Politik is violence; What my friend it’s […]
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While the cabal of far-left ideologues and interest groups complain that America’s zealous pursuit of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is not far-reaching or radical enough, a coalition of oppositional forces are pushing back against this dominant narrative. Public interest law firms, advocates, scholars, and activists are increasingly utilizing litigation to challenge the incorporation of […]
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On August 14, 2023, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (CRD) jointly released guidance titled “Questions and Answers Regarding the Supreme Court’s Decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard College and University of North Carolina.” Designed to help colleges and […]
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On July 12, after giving the public less than ten days to submit written comments, the California State Board of Education (SBE) voted to adopt the 2023 Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools, which will guide math instruction in the state’s nearly 1,000 public K–12 school districts. The controversial framework has received and continues to […]
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California is a peculiar case of counteracting, yet converging forces regarding affirmative action. In 1996, it was the first state to codify a statewide constitutional ban on preferential treatment on the basis of race, color, sex, ethnicity, or national origin via the passage of Proposition 209. Over the last two decades, big players in the […]
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Last Thursday, June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court released its ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, which it bundled with the University of North Carolina (UNC) case, putting an end to race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Framing the decision as one that embraces “the transcendent aims of the Equal Protection Clause,” […]
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“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs; you try to get the best trade-off you can get, that’s all you can hope for.” – Thomas Sowell Many academic observers have high hopes that the expected Supreme Court rulings in the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases will settle the race question in college […]
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On May 6, 2023, the California Reparations Task Force met at Northeastern University Oakland for a final discussion and vote on its full reparations report. Consisting of 40 chapters and a 104-page executive summary, the report offers sweeping policy recommendations on restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and other forms of reparations. According to the taskforce, California, which […]
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In an effort to justify students’ protest against Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan’s invited speech, Stanford Law School Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach says that she supports free speech—but she also criticized the judge for harming “people of color.” After the chaotic event, in which about 100 Stanford students heckled Judge Duncan […]
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On Monday, academic workers at Rutgers University, including part-time faculty and graduate assistants, returned to their positions, effectively ending the university’s first-ever labor stoppage since its founding in 1766. After the university reached a framework agreement promising comprehensive pay raises, over 67,000 Rutgers students are now able to resume classes after a week of disruptions […]
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On March 9, 2023, the Arkansas State Senate—controlled by a 29-to-6 Republican majority—narrowly passed a legislative ban on race-based affirmative action: Senate Bill 71 (SB 71). If signed into law, SB 71 would make the Natural State the tenth U.S. state to prohibit racial preferences in public programs. However, when the bill made its way […]
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Since the University of Chicago pioneered the test-optional movement in 2018 by dropping the SAT and the ACT from its undergraduate admissions requirements—ostensibly to “level the playing field”—1,843 accredited four-year colleges in the U.S. have made standardized tests optional, and 84 have gone completely “test-blind.” Diminishing or eliminating the role of admissions tests seems to […]
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“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” – Abraham Lincoln By the time an American kid graduates from high school, to what extent has he been exposed to left-wing racial and gender ideology? Furthermore, how does this leftward indoctrination affect the student’s political views […]
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In recent years, American higher education has popularized the idea that students do better academically when taught by professors from the same racial or ethnic group. It is hard to imagine that such a theory of “racial pairing” has risen from a testable (and refutable) hypothesis in the 1990s to an industry standard adopted by […]
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A new book documents authentic stories of fighting political indoctrination and standing up for America. In the last two years, progressives have responded to parents and citizens protesting critical race theory (CRT), a hot-button issue of the American cultural war, with dishonesty and gaslighting. On the one hand, they argue that CRT’s prevalence in American […]
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When a 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson defined America as a land that promises “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as inalienable rights, he laid out the vision for the American Dream. But as time went on, and as the tiny, fragile nation exploded into a world powerhouse, these grandiose promises were frequently blunted by tyrannical […]
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What went wrong with American education? Why are preschoolers and kindergarteners being taught that they were born to combat racism and embrace transgender rights? How come concerned parents who oppose blatant indoctrination are now the bad guys? Any keen observer of contemporary education policy would point out the role played by schools of education in […]
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As Florida’s midterm victories by conservative candidates are celebrated across the country as a blueprint for the counter-woke movement, U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker rebuffed the trend. After issuing a preliminary injunction order in August against the employment provisions in the Individual Freedom Act (IFA), also known as the Stop Wrongs against Our Kids […]
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On November 2, President Biden addressed the nation regarding the 2022 midterm elections with a sense of urgency, claiming that “our democracy is under threat” due to “political violence” planned by “extreme MAGA Republicans.” On November 3, the president traveled to San Diego County, where he spoke at a campaign rally for incumbent Congressman Mike […]
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In her majority opinion in the 2003 Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court decided on the narrow tailoring of race considerations in admissions, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued against perpetual race-based affirmative action: We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to […]
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Last month, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) hosted a Black, Latinx and Native American Family Orientation. After facing allegations of racial segregation from Christopher Rufo and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), UCSD’s Office of the Chancellor promised that “[a]ll students and their families are welcome to attend, subject to space […]
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Whenever the associate vice president for faculty and staff diversity at San Diego State University (SDSU) sends an email from work, her signature identifies the school as “a proud Hispanic Serving Institution, located in the territory of the Kumeyaay nations.” This kind of statement, not uncommon in contemporary academia, is a comical demonstration of our […]
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Donna Shalala, the former president of my alma mater—the University of Miami (UM)—who also held a professorship in my Department of International Studies during her UM tenure, once defended academic freedom: You can’t have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to […]
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Last Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker from the North District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the employment provisions in Florida’s newly codified Individual Freedom Act (IFA). On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted a lawsuit challenging the IFA, also known as the Stop the […]
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