Center for Equal Opportunity

Last updated

Center for Equal Opportunity
Founded1995
FounderLinda Chavez
TypeNational policy think tank
FocusColorblind admissions, anti-affirmative action
Area served
United States of America
Key people
Linda Chavez, Devon Westhill
Revenue (2021)
$557,750
Expenses (2021)$491,627
Website www.ceousa.org
https://beta.candid.org/profile/7773944

The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) is an American conservative think tank whose mission is to study, develop, and disseminate ideas that promote colorblind equal opportunity and oppose affirmative action in America. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

The founder and chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity is Linda Chavez, and the president and general counsel is Devon Westhill. [2] [4] Westhill, who is Black, argues his degree from the University of North Carolina is worth less because of the university's non-colorblind admissions policy, as he believes others could assume he was admitted due to his race. [2]

Since 1995, the Center for Equal Opportunity has released dozens of studies documenting the extent to which race is a factor in American college admissions at over 60 colleges and universities. [5] [6]

In 2019, it issued a complaint against Texas Tech's medical school that the school's use of race as an admissions criterion was illegal. The complaint was settled when the school announced it would no longer consider an applicant's race and/or ethnicity. [3] [7]

In 2021, Chavez argued U.S. democracy was threatened both by Donald Trump supporting election deniers and by progressive advocates of transgender rights and critical race theory. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

Affirmative action refers to a set of policies and practices within a government or organization seeking to benefit marginalized groups. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has been justified by the idea that it may help with bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, and promoting diversity, social equity and redressing alleged wrongs, harms, or hindrances, also called substantive equality.

Reverse discrimination is a term used to describe discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities could reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, were impermissible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lani Guinier</span> American legal scholar and civil rights theorist (1950–2022)

Carol Lani Guinier was an American educator, legal scholar, and civil rights theorist. She was the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and the first woman of color appointed to a tenured professorship there. Before coming to Harvard in 1998, Guinier taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School for ten years. Her scholarship covered the professional responsibilities of public lawyers, the relationship between democracy and the law, the role of race and gender in the political process, college admissions, and affirmative action. In 1993 President Bill Clinton nominated Guinier to be United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, but withdrew the nomination.

Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minority groups" did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause so long as it took into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant. The decision largely upheld the Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which allowed race to be a consideration in admissions policy but held racial quotas to be unconstitutional. In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), a separate case decided on the same day as Grutter, the Court struck down a points-based admissions system that awarded an automatic bonus to the admissions scores of minority applicants.

Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda Chavez</span> American politician (born 1947)

Linda Lou Chavez is an American author, commentator, and radio talk show host. She is also a Fox News analyst, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, has a syndicated column that appears in newspapers nationwide each week, and sits on the board of directors of two Fortune 500 companies: Pilgrim's Pride and ABM Industries. Chavez was the highest-ranking woman in President Ronald Reagan's White House, and was the first Latina ever nominated to the United States Cabinet, when President George W. Bush nominated her Secretary of Labor. She withdrew from consideration for the position when the media published allegations that she had employed an illegal immigrant a decade earlier. In 2000, Chavez was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.

DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the case had become moot and so declined to render a decision on the merits. American student Marco DeFunis, who had been denied admission to the University of Washington School of Law in the state of Washington before he was provisionally admitted during the pendency of the case, was slated to graduate within a few months of the decision being rendered.

Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is the concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are forms of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by Black people and other people of color cause disadvantages for white people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affirmative action in the United States</span>

In the United States, affirmative action consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to groups considered or classified as historically excluded, specifically racial minorities and women. These programs tend to focus on access to education and employment in order to redress the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Another goal of affirmative action policies is to ensure that public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carl Cohen (philosopher)</span> American philosopher (1931–2023)

Carl Cohen was an American philosopher. He was Professor of Philosophy at the Residential College of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.

Initiative 200 was a Washington state initiative to the Legislature promoted by California affirmative-action opponent Ward Connerly, and filed by Scott Smith and Tim Eyman. It sought to prohibit racial and gender preferences by state and local government. It was on the Washington ballot in November 1998 and passed with 58.22% of the vote. It added to Washington's law the following language:

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kimberlé Crenshaw</span> American academic and lawyer (born 1959)

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw is an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine</span> Medical school in Texas, USA

The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine is the medical school of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC). TTUHSC SOM was originally chartered in 1969 to train more physicians for the underserved populations of the West Texas region. As of 2011, the School of Medicine has awarded over 4,000 Doctor of Medicine degrees. The school offers the traditional four-year curriculum, as well as an accelerated three-year track, and joint degree programs with Texas Tech University.

Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.

Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U.S. 291 (2014), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action and race- and sex-based discrimination in public university admissions. In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause does not prevent states from enacting bans on affirmative action in education.

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.

Affirmative action refers to activities or policies that seek to help groups that are often affected by discrimination obtain equal access to opportunities, particularly in areas such as employment and education. In the United States, in the early 2000s, the use of race, gender, and other factors in college and university admissions decisions came under attack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2020 California Proposition 16</span> California ballot measure to undo the states ban on affirmative action

Proposition 16 is a California ballot proposition that appeared on the November 3, 2020, general election ballot, asking California voters to amend the Constitution of California to repeal Proposition 209 (1996). Proposition 209 amended the state constitution to prohibit government institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Therefore, Proposition 209 banned the use of race- and gender-based affirmative action in California's public sector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diversity, equity, and inclusion</span> Organizational equality training term

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are organizational frameworks which seek to promote "the fair treatment and full participation of all people", particularly groups "who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination" on the basis of identity or disability. These three notions together represent "three closely linked values" which organizations seek to institutionalize through DEI frameworks. Some experts say diversity and inclusion should be decoupled in some cases. Some frameworks, primarily in Britain, substitute the notion of "equity" with equality: equality, diversity, inclusion (EDI). Other variations include diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB), justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, or diversity, equity, inclusion and access.

References

  1. "Mission Statement & Purpose | Center for Equal Opportunity". www.ceousa.org. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "Decades of stark divisions over affirmative action set for Supreme Court showdown". NBC News. October 28, 2022. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  3. 1 2 Najmabadi, Shannon (April 9, 2019). "Texas Tech Health Sciences Center agrees to stop considering race in admissions, ending federal inquiry". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  4. "Linda Chavez". PBS. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  5. "Center for Equal Opportunity Now Targets State of Maryland". Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. October 25, 2000. Retrieved November 8, 2023.
  6. "Studies by Center for Equal Opportunity | Center for Equal Opportunity". www.ceousa.org. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  7. "Texas Tech medical school to stop using race in admissions". NBC News. April 10, 2019. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  8. Chavez, Linda (October 8, 2021). "Threats to Democracy Come From the Left and the Right". Real Clear Politics. Retrieved November 3, 2023.