Don’t Let Claudine Gay’s “Research” Destroy the California Civil Rights Initiative

The Claudine Gay scandal, culminating in the Harvard president’s resignation, shows the intersection of DEI and academic corruption produces assorted social ills. And yet California legislators would use the work of “experts” like Gay to resurrect racial preferences against the desires of their own constituents.

Even in deep-blue California, voters don’t want the government to play racial favorites. Indeed, in 1996 Golden State voters set a standard for the nation when they approved Proposition 209, otherwise known as the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a state constitutional amendment banning racial preferences in employment and education. Even after years of leftward drift, the state’s electorate reaffirmed that ban by a large margin in 2020. 

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Orange County Register (paywall)

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Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here. Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute

Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images