Articles

Discourse : Segregation By Any Other Name

February 08, 2024 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

School segregation has risen from the grave—disguised under a different name. An increasing number of school districts are offering “affinity classes” that cater to specific racial groups. Schools have long offered racially segregated options for electives such as African American history or mentorship programs. But the idea has begun ...

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Reason : Wonka Fights the Candy Cronies

January 23, 2024 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

The box-office hit Wonka is a wild flight of imagination, but within the glamor and fantasy lies a hard truth: The mighty often manipulate government power to shut out competitors, stifling innovation and individual rights. The regulatory barriers manipulated by Willy Wonka’s powerful rivals to stymie entrepreneurs are all too real. In the fi ...

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Quillette : The Peculiar Silence in the Students for Fair Admissions Decision

August 21, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

To hear almost anyone tell it, racial preferences in university admissions are dead. But this pervasive sense of finality belies a curious silence in the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions. The Court never expressly overrules the line of precedent that has allowed universities to discriminate for the last 50 years. Witho ...

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Law & Liberty : Is It Time to Stop Asking About Race?

July 13, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

We’ve all checked the boxes on race and ethnicity questionnaires, a staple of most government applications and surveys, and they have never made much sense. On ethnicity, they ask whether you are “Hispanic or Latino” or “Not-Hispanic or Latino,” which is about as sensible a question as asking a mammal if it’s a c ...

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Fox News : Supreme Court puts universities on notice, but missed an opportunity

June 29, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

Universities take note — the Supreme Court will not tolerate the fanatical and wanton reliance on race that has become the norm in admissions. In Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court held that Harvard and North Carolina had gone too far with racial preferences in weighing student applicants. Too … ...

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San Antonio Express-News : Texas should end judicial deference

June 06, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

In 2011, Hermenia Jenkins, the principal at a public school in a Houston suburb, was surprised to learn that despite her term contract, the superintendent had demoted her to assistant principal and was moving her to a different school. She took umbrage, arguing that her contract shielded her from this reassignment because the new job … ...

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Texas poised to ban ‘ideological oaths’ at state universities

May 18, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

The Texas House of Representatives will soon vote on a bill that would strengthen academic freedom and intellectual diversity at Texas universities. Senate Bill 17 would prohibit public universities from requiring “ideological oaths or statements” of students, staff, or job applicants, and it would put an end to university offices dedic ...

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Des Moines Register : Iowa Legislature should restore judicial independence

April 06, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

In 2020, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected a married couple’s challenge to the Department of Revenue over a tax assessment and penalty involving the sale of farmland. The question was whether the couple had “materially participated” in a “business” by renting their farmland. The couple said they did, pointing to their bo ...

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The Hill : The federal government wants to micromanage the nation’s housing

April 03, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

In the early 2000s, the city of St. Paul, Minn., cracked down on landlords who ignored rat problems, bad sanitation, poor heating, and so on. But instead of shaping up, the landlords sued the city for violating the federal Fair Housing Act. They argued that St. Paul’s insistence upon habitable homes hurt minorities by forcing … ...