PRESS RELEASE: March 29, 2003. First press release on Michigan Student Study findings by Zarko Research. Later versions lead to May 16, 2003 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

This page is being reworked in normal chronological order from its reverse chronological original state and materials being added. Please be patient with this process.

40th Anniversary of MLK "I have a dream speech."
University of Michigan Releases New Admissions Policy with Mandatory "Diversity Contribution" Essay.  August 28, 2003.
Today marked the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech."  Rather than judging prospective applicants on the content of their character, the University of Michigan released its revised admissions policy judging them on the content of their essays self-articulating their "contribution to the diversity" of the campus. New "admissions readers" will then score the entire application into one of five categories resulting in admission, waiting list, or being declined.  The unwritten criteria these "readers" will use remains unknown, but one of the most interesting facts is that the new application now has several more essays including a required choice of two questions that detail how the applicant might contribute to the "diversity" of campus. This requirement, in effect, bypasses the optionality of the "race question" (which still remains a separate, but optional question), since it essentially requires the student identify his ethnic status.

"Large Midwestern University".  How Michigan wanted to hide itself from the Michigan Student Study.  by Chetly Zarko.  August 5, 2003.
In a humorous footnote to the Evidence of Things Not Seen, the Czar's Court has discovered "Data Use Policies and Procedures" written in May 1998 for the Michigan Student Study. Although probably not the first data policy for MSS, it does allow researchers to submit proposals for parts of the dataset, and gives priority to proposals for access to "underutilized" portions of the dataset (see Lerner and Nagai's analysis of Gurin's "underutilization" of legally relevant datapoints). John Matlock and Gerald Gurin retain exclusive jurisdiction and discretion under this policy to accept or deny proposals.  Most humorously, "individuals using the data should not, without permission, identify the University of Michigan as the institution that is being studied. They should use "large Midwestern research university" as the identifier." This document is a nice companion to the document reported on in Science Beyond Review, where Matlock writes to Vice Provost Monts declaring that he and Gerry would ensure no one whoses goals "clashed" with their own would get access to the data.

U-Michigan Study:  Protestant Work Ethic Counterproductive in Multicultural Workplace.  U-Michigan Press Release: August 6, 2003.
The conclusion is that "staying on task" and other elements of the Protestant work ethic are counterproductive because other cultures in the modern workplace prefer a more "personal" communication style.  The Czar's Court has requested a methodology from the scientist involved, and simply points here to the astonishing conclusion the study arrives at.

First Known Indian Caste Discrimination Case filed against University of Michigan.  Intellectual property theft, fraud, corporate-university "relationships", and violation of FOIA also alleged.
Copy of the complaint linked from Faupel & Associates Law Firm.
Pinaki Mazumder, Professor of Computer Engineering at U-Michigan, offers a story that has many important implications.  Some obvious implications that the Czar's Court has previously reported on include U-M links to an interesting corporate fraud story of Avanti corporation, an Enron-like story where corporate officers were convicted criminally and the company required to repay $195 million in stolen data reparations (see 1994 report on the NSFNET relationships, with IBM, MCI, and U-M exchanging favors).  Is U-M fighting Dr. Mazumder to cover up its complicity or lack of effectiveness in dealing with plagiarism and intellectual property theft?  Are they protecting his IP as effectively as they have done so for they social psychology department?  The Czar's Court still hasn't figured out the political motivation for this one - but given the pattern of other similar stories, maybe its nothing more than an ingrained bureaucratic rally around the wagons mentality that is kicking in.
As to the claim on caste discrimination, in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, the SC ruled that one still can not discriminate amongst different minority groups.  Although this case doesn't deal with admissions, it definitely raises a cautionary note.  How do we define minority?

The Education of Mr. Williams.
REVIEW AND OUTLOOK.  The Wall St. Journal. July 31, 2003.
The left eats its own again.  Further enforcing an orthodoxy of the left, Ralph Neas, with the People for the American Way, warns the black Democratic Mayor of Washington D.C., Anthony Williams, not to meet school choice supporters. Whether "vouchers" are  the solution or not, an open debate is certainly needed. Anything raising the level of debate on education is a good thing. While we criticize the left for eating its own, there are good examples of the same occurring on the right -- even some right here in Michigan.

'Diversity' . . . D'oh! Some tactical stumbles on the way to the Michigan debacle.
by John J. Miller, National Review (Print), July 28, 2003.
Mentions the Gurin debacle in the context of a failed strategy by CIR in the Michigan case, and indirectly cites Zarko's Wall Street Journal piece as "reported in the press" (similar to a debate about the piece on Hannity and Colmes the day after the Court ruled in late June).   Here are some fair use quotes. Hi-compression jpegs. Page 1 160K.  Page 2. 138K. Quoting the article:

"Conservatives who thought they were on the verge of a game-winning touchdown with the Michigan cases now find that they've thrown an interception and the other team is sprinting down the field. ... The Hopwood case was won on pure law, with no mention of the social-science gobbledygook underpinning Michigan's key claim that diversity is essential to intellectual growth. ... They needed a new reason for being, and they got it from Patricia Gurin, a Michigan psychology professor who produced a flurry of research on the supposed benefits of diversity in Ann Arbor. Gurin's conclusions have been picked apart in exhaustive critiques by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the National Association of Scholars and contradicted in separate research by political scientists Stanley Rothman, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Neil Nevitte. Yet Michigan's entire case rested on her claims.  Still, CIR believed Gurin's work was irrelevant.  "Whether diversity is a compelling state interest is a legal question, not an empirical one," says CIR's Levey. Questions of principle shouldn't play second fiddle to the soft claims of social science, after all. ... "I say this more in sadness than in anger, but CIR made a tactical error," says Peter Wood of Boston University.  "They should have confronted the diversity argument."  This would not have been difficult. Following the oral arguments in April, it was reported in the press that a University of Michigan survey of its own students show "diversity" having a negative impact on campus.  Naturally, this piece of information did not find its way into Michigan's court presentations.  It was briefly assumed by some that the university had suppresed the survey results-until administrators said they have provided the report to CIR years earlier.  "We had the material in our files," says Levey.  "We overlooked it."

Intellectual fraud trial against 'U' postponed. 
by Maria Sprow, Trista Van Tine.  July 28, 2003.  The Michigan Daily.
Details an academic fraud and plagiarism case filed against U-M.  Another iteration of an issue Zarko Research has been reporting on since 1995.  Interestingly, the Plaintiff, Kauffman, apparently declined a $300,000.00 cash out offer because he wouldn't be subject to a gag stipulation.

Diversity Science Beyond Review. Letter to The University Record,
by Chetly Zarko.  July 21, 2003.
The U-Record is the official publicity tool of the University of Michigan.  Despite other letters as long as 585 words, and despite its acceptance of a multitude of guest writings of tremendous length, the editor would not allow a longer rebuttal to her own news analysis on June 2 criticizing my Wall St. Journal article (she also never interviewed me for that piece).

Michigan Civil Rights Initiave (MCRI) Website Online!  July 20, 2003. Both the original site and new site were designed by Zarko Research.

Michigan Civil Rights Initiative "Steering Committee" Press Conference. July 23, 2003.  Lansing, Michigan. 10am.

Letters to and from the Hon. John D. Dingell.
Dingell's original letter to Ward Connerly, like the quotations from the BAMN protestor posted below, represents another attack on the Constitution, this time also on the unity of the several states.  Zarko Researchwill collect and publish here any other letters in response to Mr. Dingell upon request.
In the original July 9, 2003 letter from Dingell to Connerly,Dingell personally attacks Connerly and suggests Connerly has no right to come to Michigan.  Dingell posted the letter to his official website, and had no qualms about using government funded mailing services.

Zarko Proposal and Speech, July 17, 2003, to U-Michigan Regents.
Create an open, transparent multipartisian committee to change admissions in wake of Gratz. Create a two-tiered admissions system.  50% strictly merit or race-neutral (this would allow race-neutral programs to be measured), and 50% selected like Law School (the overall effect of this proposal would cut costs in half compared to a strict carbon copy of the Law School). More important, the island of merit would give statisticians a yardstick by which to measure progress, and eventually eliminate all preferences on O'Connor's 25 year timeline.

"We won't be silent until people like you are no longer allowed to speak on a public forum and spew your racism to the rest of America."
BAMN Protestor, July 8, 2003.Quote from a protester at July 8, 2003 Connerly speech at U-Mich, while trying to "shout-down" publicly scheduled speakers. The protester was so disruptive, that, quite ironically, University of Michigan police were forced to detain her (but released her and others after an hour).  The right of free speech certainly extends to protesting other speech, but it does not extend so far as to permit the physical interference with another person's speech rights.  The University of Michigan has set up an orderly system by which speech rights can be equally exercised (by anyone applying for time) on its "public forums"; and it must protect the exercise of those rights equally.
The words quoted above, although speech protected by the First Amendment if uttered non-disruptively, represent a larger danger that modern America faces regarding an assault on the First Amendment.

Ward Connerly to Speak on Steps of Graduate Library. 12pm July 8, 2003.
Will there be a Michigan Ballot Initiative to End Race Preferences?

O'Connor Gives "Deference" to Flawed Social Science!  Zarko analysis.

June 23, 2003. THE DECISIONS:  Grutter v. Bollinger. 900K pdf.  Gratz v. Bollinger. 850K .pdf.

June 19 Zarko speech to Board of Regents. Regents should open up U-M scientific data used in court or public policy processes.

The ORIGINAL SOURCE material for the Wall Street Journal documented ONLINE IN .pdf format (RECOMMENDED.

1994 DOCUMENT ORDERING DATA WITHHOLDING from those whose projects "clash" with U-M's goals.  P-1 / P-2.

Over a 160 OTHER BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS are available on CD-ROM (this is the data analyzed by Dr. Lerner and Dr. Nagai in "DIVERSITY DISTORTED"); Based upon 5 of the 160  ---  Unattributed 'ATTRIBUTION BIAS' Caution: 1 MB File.

NAT Hentoff and LINDA CHAVEZ write syndicated columns citing WSJ story. Hentoff's piece is particularly on-point, and suggests socio-economic preferences. Thomas BRAY argues against misused social science and critiques Gurin in his Sunday, June 8, 2003 Detroit News column. ROGER CLEGG, of the Center for Equal Opportunity, writes against "Bad Science" in the U-M case in June 9 National Review Online.

May 29, THE DETROIT NEWS Editorial Board agrees with FOIA data release, despite reiterating its strong support for U-M diversity policy. The News finds the withholding of scientific data "unseemly" and U-M's credibility at stake.

Dr. Robert Lerner and Dr. Althea Nagai support author's conclusions in an INDEPENDENT QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS of hundreds of supporting documents and their CEO publication (PDF).

Special Counsel to U-M President, Gary Krenz,
Officially Continues to Withhold Gurin's 'Diversity' Data from Public
Contains expert testimony requirements law and excerpts from plaintiffs documents. Copy of e-mail to author denying "FOIA Appeal."
"...the data set in its entirety has never been released and remains the intellectual property of the investigators and the University." The Many Official Responses of U-M
First E-mail Official University of Michigan Response to the Lying to Supreme Court? Opinion Analysis
by Julie Peterson, Director, UMichigan News and Information Service (May 14)
Rebuttal of overall charges
by Julie Peterson (May 18)
"The Point by Point Response to Critique of U-M Diversity Research"
by John Matlock and Gerald Gurin, author's of the questioned reports (May 19)
Open Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal
by Paul Courant,  Provost-Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs (May 22)
Courant: Challenge to diversity evidence is unfounded
by Laurel Thomas Gnagey
The University Record, June 2, 2003. Page 1, Lead story.

Science Without Peer Review! May 1, 2003.

There is a socio-economic alternative to affirmative action!

Other U-M archival documents suggest a constitutional alternative that could help all "disadvantaged" individuals, regardless of race.  The Michigan Bar Journal piece cited above and the op-ed in the Ann Arbor News are the best descriptions of his political position on this topic.

Read an older affirmative action special report with a variety of interesting admissions documents, albeit none as incriminating as the one reported on above.

Higher Education Watch

This page is a collection of selected commentary and original research on higher education and race done by Zarko Research, primarily during 2003. ZR will update the collection to include more contemporaneous materials.

"We will look for them [essay writers] to take a bit of risk, but we don't want them to take too much risk to where they can offend the reader or someone else.  We will look for all those kinds of things that the U still feels are important ... The only thing we've done ... we've rearranged them so that ... they are no longer given points ..." Theodore Spencer, Director, Undergraduate Admissions, Sep 17, 2003.

"... the claim of increased tension ... has no way to be tested.  We don't have a baseline, before there was any race-conscious admissions policy. We have no real evidence about there was increased racial tension because race conscious policies or not."  Of course, this double-edge criticism of an opposition argument is accurately applied to her own work. "We've tried to understand where the tension comes from ... none of the regressions work ..." This is an admission that she ran regression on an unexplained variable that she didn't report to the Court, and therefore that she knowingly withheld a weakness in her study from the Court. Professor emerita, Patricia Gurin. Sep 17, 2003.

November 25, 2003, Tuesday, 02:13
Review of Book - The Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry into the Roots of Political Correctness.  2001, 2003.
I recently was sent a review copy of a book by Oakland University professor of organizational behavior, Howard S. Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz was one of the speakers on July 8, 2003, when Ward Connerly kicked off the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to end race preferences by ballot question.  Schwartz is also known for a book examining narcissistic behavior in organizations using the Challenger explosion and General Motors as cases studies.
This book, available at Amazon, is primarily a Freudian analysis of why men and women buy into the modern day notions of feminism and how maleness is under attack at multiple levels.  Through a multitude of examples, Schwartz argues that the "politically correct" movement and feminism have wrought upon young males a psychological inferiority complex that ultimately takes advantage of an instinct to be subordinate to the primordial mother.  Feminism has elevated the psychological traits of women at the expense of those traits we traditionally see as male.  Feminism's modern gains have been made by portraying the male as inherently violent, warlike, under-sexed, and evil.  And more importantly, Schwartz argues, males are buying into this paradigm, creating higher suicide and mortality rates, and leading to a host of socialization problems.
The implied argument and value system feminism forces upon society and the family is exactly the opposite though of what the research shows is good for children.  Feminism's implication that the male is the source of all problems however, is refuted by the fact that the empirical research has "found that the absence of the father is associated with the problem." If maleness were truly the cause of violence, we would expect to find less violence in single-mother families; an empirical result that would be exactly the opposite of the current science.
I strongly recommend this book and think it makes an important contribution, although it is not for the casual reader and is quite involved in its use of Freudian and other psychoanalytic technique.  At some point, I may post a link to a full-length book review.
It should be noted that although the book doesn't make a commentary on the proper role of feminism, the Czar's Court believes that feminism took its wrong turn after the Suffrage movement and during the Prohibitionist movement of the twenties (women attempting "temperance" of male "badness").  Clearly, the empowering nature of the right to vote was something that men never had a moral right to deny to women, and political and individual equality of the sexes is a right that should and must be guaranteed to all. The Czar's Court believes that balance between the sexes must be attained, and that the positive aspects and beneficial differences in each sex should be highlighted and the weaknesses of each should be discouraged (for example, the Czar's Court has no use for deadbeat dads or wife-beaters, but sees these weaknesses arising from a lack of masculine responsibility and character, not as "part of the nature" of manhood -- for lack of a better way of saying it, "real men," who learn from their positive male role models, have never done these things)
In the interests of full disclosure, I have worked with Howard on some issues related to the FOIA of U-Michigan diversity research and our mutual support of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

November 20, 2003, Thursday, 03:43
Faking Racism for Personal Gain. 
This story, which I'm taking from several days ago on Kimberly Swygert's site again, really takes the cake.  I hadn't had a chance to get around to posting it here, but I have for some time wondered how many of "alleged" campus claims of racism, racist flyers, and racist "chalkings," are real and how many are planted by the political movement that thrives on them. It turns out that racial epithets written on the door of some students at San Fransisco State University were planted there by the minority students themselves, either to get one's woman's white roommate replaced or by another's desire to bring racial issues to the forefront of campus politics.  In this story from the Golden Gate Xpress, we see just how poisonous the racial politics of destruction can be.  The San Fransisco prosecutor elected not to file falsification of police report charges against either perpetrator, whose acts of personal destruction (had these false charges not been unearthed ... ) against other specific individuals certainly equal that of any words alone a white person could have written. That paper wrote:
The first incident occured when the words “Black Bi*****” was scrawled across the door of a fifth floor Village at Centennial Hall apartment on Sept. 14 or 15. Student Allison Jackson filed a report with the University Police claiming that her neighbor was a possible suspect in the vandalism. A handwriting analyst was called upon to determine who wrote the words on Sept. 19. Samples that were used in the case came from Jackson’s roommates as well as the accused neighbor and Jackson. The results were released to the police the same day. Due to an ongoing and escalating feud with her roommates, Jackson wrote the words in an attempt to get relocated to another room. According to the [police] report report, when told she was a suspect, she explained why she did it. “I was requesting a roommate move, and I was given that advice that in order for the roommate move to be taken seriously, things needed to occur … issues needed to occur, and that if I really wanted, I could go ahead and pursue those issues, so the issue was basically that I wanted a roommate change.”
A similar seemingly unrelated incident occured in Mary Park Hall. After a supposed hate crime involving a watermelon in early September did not receive enough attention by campus authorities, freshman Leah Miller decided to write the word 'NIGG' on fellow resident Brandi Parr’s door on or around Sept. 20, according to a police report. Then she wrote a note bearing the same slur and claimed to her residential adviser that it was slipped under her door. Miller said she was pressured into doing this by an older student, who claimed that she “had” to do it in order for the University to recognize racism in the community and that things like this had been done before.“Granted I was wrong and it was stupid of me, there’s no excuse,” Miller told [X]press. “I’m mad at myself that I let someone coerce me into doing this, but it’s been a big learning experience.”

November 18, 2003, Tuesday, 00:32
Do the Math: We should cut Higher Ed. budgets in Michigan.
The political machine of the universities is at it again, trying to preserve its chunk of the pie.  President Peter McPherson of Michigan State University sent an e-mail to all MSU students and alumni trying to get them to lobby state legislators to preserve higher education budgets.  This piece from the State News puts enough facts in perspective.  Check out this arrogance, "The student involvement is probably more broad and deep because of the seriousness of the situation," university spokesman Terry Denbow said. "Students are excellent advocates, especially when they have the right information."  University administrators seemingly have had a recent lock on the "right information".  But the piece goes on, "MSU had $21 million sliced from its $693 million budget this year. As a result, university officials cut $31 million from its budget and raised tuition 9.9 percent. About half of MSU's total budget comes from state appropriations, Webster said." Do the math.  MSU gets half its money (U-M about 10%) from the State directly, and the State cut the budget by $21 million.  MSU responded by cutting MORE than it lost, but it still raised tuition by 9.9% (just under the magic 10% that would have violated deals with legislators).  This means that other administrative costs rose at a higher rate than 9.9%, and MSU couldn't find a way to keep those costs under control.  Something must be done to keep university administrations from continued growth, and the political machines from absorbing increasingly large portions of our budget.

Scalia Raps Supreme Court's Decision to ignore Denver case.
Justice Scalia today criticized other justices for refusing to take a public contracting affirmative action appeal regarding the City of Denver's use of preferences despite no evidence of specific past discrimination.  Scalia and Rehnquist signed a highly unusual ten-page dissent on the denial of cert (most denials go without comment), in which neither Thomas or Kennedy joined (four votes is sufficient to grant review). The good news in not having a writ of certiori in this case is that the timing would be extremely bad, and it would be unfortunate to give opponents of equality another win with the current configuration of the Court.  Thomas and Kennedy recognized that it is not the strategically correct time to take on this case. The next case that the Supreme Court decides on this issue should follow a Michigan ballot initiative, so the court knows that the "green briefs" of Lee Bollinger's corporate-lined entourage are trumped by the briefs of individual ballots in the minds of future justices.

November 16, 2003, Sunday, 00:01
Sen. Kennedy Helped "Stack" Appellate Court for U-Michigan in Affirmative Action Cases and Proof of Racism on the Left.
Confirming other information at Zarko Research's disposal, The Washington Times released internal memos obtained (initially by the Wall Street Journal) from an unnamed source.  The memos prove that Kennedy unethically interfered with the nomination process for a specific legal outcome in Grutter v. Bollinger, and that Senator Durbin blocked Miguel Estrada based on his race. This story is full of exotic details. The Washington Times wrote:
In one memo to Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois obtained by The Washington Times, Washington lawyer Miguel A. Estrada is singled out as "especially dangerous" because "he is Latino." 
In another memo, staffers for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts recommend that a Bush nominee to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Tennessee Judge Julia S. Gibbons, be stalled until after that appellate court decided on the two major affirmative action cases dealing with the University of Michigan and its law school.
"The thinking is that the current 6th Circuit will sustain the affirmative action program, but if a new judge with conservative views is confirmed before the case is decided, that new judge will be able, under 6th Circuit rules, to review the case and vote on it," the staffers wrote.
Their is strong reason to believe that other misuse of government position and congressional staff time occurred, and that history will write a very dirty tale of how this case was "won" by Michigan. Lee Bollinger coordinated a much wider "political defense" than even the "spamming" of the Court with amici. This will be recorded as one of the truly saddest and most dishonorable chapters in the University's and nation's history.
And most deservingly of contempt is one Democratic response, "These are thefts of Democratic memos," Mr. Smith said.  Maybe the people need to steal a little more knowledge about their government, although we will concede that no one Party owns a monopoly on dirty tricks.
"They also identified Miguel Estrada (D.C. Circuit) as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."
"Elaine [Jones, of the NAACP LDF] would like the Committee to hold off on any 6th Circuit nominees until the University of Michigan case regarding the constitutionality of affirmative action in higher education is decided by the en banc 6th Circuit," said the memo. "Rumors have been circulating that the case will be decided in the next few weeks." ... "are a little concerned about the propriety of scheduling hearings based on the resolution of a particular case. We are also aware that the 6th Circuit is in dire need of additional judges. Nevertheless we recommend that Gibbons be scheduled for a later hearing: the Michigan case is important, and there is little damage that we can foresee in moving Clifton first," a reference to Richard Clifton, "an uncontroversial nominee to the 9th Circuit."
In the end, staffers recommended that Mr. Kennedy should, "Let Elaine know that we will ask" then Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont "to schedule Gibbons after Clifton. Given the dearth of uncontroversial nominees, however, the Committee will probably have to hold a hearing for Gibbons on May 9th even if there's yet no decision in the Michigan case."

November 15, 2003, Saturday, 00:36
State Rep (R, Macomb) Leon Drolet Speaks to U-Michigan Republicans.
State Representative Leon Drolet, one of the two lead legislative members of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative Steering Committee, spoke to College Republicans Thursday night about the liberal bias of university preferences and, you guessed it, socioeconomic preferences.  This Michigan Daily piece, aside from being an atrocious piece of writing, exhibits its own bias (it presents Drolet's critics views without context and without his rebuttals, which I'm sure were present at the meeting).  Although I was unable to attend, I also heard that when someone identified BAMN members as "former Trotsey-ites", a BAMNer corrected the person by saying "former?"

November 15, 2003, Saturday, 00:36
Affirmative Action: "This is a war, and we are in the middle of it."
Posted moments ago, in today's Washington Post online, there is this fine analysis of the potential legal challenges to "mechanistic" race scholarships programs.  Many schools are changing from race exclusive programs to socio-economic inclusive programs, a positive step. Quoting the Post:
"This is a war, and we are in the middle of it," said Tom Parker, dean of admissions at Amherst, who has found himself under attack from all sides for his attempts to promote diversity on campus without running afoul of the law. ...
Some admissions officers say the minority outreach programs correct a historical injustice. "The idea that the playing field was level to begin with is ridiculous," said Parker, the Amherst admissions dean, citing the widespread practice of reserving a certain proportion of college places for the children of alumni, most of whom are white.
Zarko Research agrees, but why correct one injustice with another one that fails to solve the problem.  End alumni preferences.

November 14, 2003, Friday, 11:19
"Affirmative Action is just Masturbation."
In a priceless affirmation of what the Czar's Court has been saying for more than a year now, this Colorado University panel member “(Affirmative action) is just masturbation. It will make you feel good, but it won’t solve shit,” said professor Thaddeus Tecza.  Tecza concludes with a proverbial 'money shot,' “We must make class the issue in regard to affirmative action."

November 11, 2003, Tuesday, 01:00
The Anti-Racial Privacy Initiative.
Here's an interesting twist on racial data collection.  Now Senator Edward Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusettes) has attached a rider to a Pell Grant funding bill that would require universities to report breakdowns of admissions by race, socioeconomic position, legacy, and other measures to the public.  The purpose is to pressure even more universities, who don't measure up to the unknowable "critical mass," into diversity programs.

November 8, 2003, Saturday, 00:35
More on the Success of Alternatives to Race Preferences.  U-Washington Minority enrollment back to Pre-I-200 Levels.
In an example following the Texas example, but this time using socioeconomic diversity alternatives rather than a 10% plan, Washington's ban on race preferences has been followed by 5 years of steady improvement.

November 8, 2003, Saturday, 00:35
Princeton, and Ivy League, Worst Schools for 'Socioeconomic Diversity.'
Surprise, Surprise.  The "old boys network" continues to dominate at these schools, according to a study by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Z-wire reports on it here. JBHE reached this conclusion by comparing the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at each major university. This is precisely the kind of reporting JBHE should be doing, and it benefits their reader base far more than advocacy of pure race preferences. Notably, the report also finds Berkeley to have the highest socioeconomic diversity, a conclusion supporting the 1989 memos obtained by Zarko Research suggesting Berkeley policymakers had a special focus on socioeconomic diversity. Unfortunately, Berkeley's program might be too expansive, or might be a mere substitute for race in the wake of Prop 209, as they also have a problem with dropout rates (although we don't have national comparison data)(see below).

November 8, 2003, Saturday, 00:35
"Twenty percent is not enough." Critical Mass Further Defined.
According to the South Bend Tribune, in this article discussing IU/South Bend, Notre Dame, and Ivy Tech State College, we have further defined that elusive term. Quoting the paper: Virginia Calvin, chancellor of Ivy Tech State College's north central region, said her college is "not serving the minority population we should be serving." Twenty percent of the college's population is minority, she said. "Twenty percent is not enough," Calvin added.

November 8, 2003, Saturday, 00:05
U-C Regents Chairman John Moores' Releases Dropout Rate Data.
Bound to keep the flames of the firestorm stiring on the debate over the California system's admission of low SAT scoring applicants, Moores' released data that should surprise no one.

November 7, 2003, Friday, 22:28
Economist Paul Krugman to speak on U-Mich campus.
The Goodspeedupdate reports that economist Paul Krugman will be speaking next Wednesday, November 12, at 8pm in the Schorling Auditorium of the School of Education Building here in Ann Arbor.  Krugman is a well-known respectable left-of-center economist, and he is a serious intellectual force on the left.  In his latest New York Times column he parenthetically writes: (I'll explain in a future column how Republicans are using the prescription drug bill to lay the groundwork for later Medicare cuts) Zarko Research, for one, would like to know how the largest expansion of Medicare ever is part of a right-wing conspiracy to actually cut Medicare.

November 6, 2003, Thursday, 12:48
Academic Freedom, Criticizing Gays, and Indiana University.  A contrast to Michigan's "How to be Gay?" Course.
In a second story from Indiana University printed at Frontpage.com, a professor (Eric B. Rasmusen) has been under sharp attack for posting to his University provided "personal webspace" comments outside of class critical of gays and suggesting their unfittness to teach.  Although the University made the right decision in not discliplining the professor, because it couldn't legally or under the AAUP's "code of ethics," a large number of other Indiana affiliates and students are calling for his termination or limitations on his class and ability to speak.  The Czar's Court finds this to be an illuminating contrast to the response to the University of Michigan's pro-gay lifestyle course "How to be Gay?" by David Halperin. In Indiana, Chancellor Sharon S. Brehm told the Bloomington Faculty Council that Rasmusen's comments "deeply offensive, hurtful, and very harmful stereotyping," concluding that university's "commitment to inclusion and its respect for diversity." Brehm however reiterated that Rasmusen had a First Amendment right to his speech, and that the University recognized his academic freedom in the case.  Brehm's response was the appropriate way to handle the measure.  Criticizing allegedly inappropriate speech, without official retaliation, is always a legitimate way of engaging debate. Rasmusen and others are wrong to assert that administrators who publicly denounce their speech creates a substantially chilling environment for all "politically incorrect" speech.  Indeed, Rasmusen's speech itself denounces an entire lifestyle, and it would be absurd to expect that those who live or support such a lifestyle wouldn't either be equally "chilled" or be expected to respond in condemnation.
But other administrators and individuals have called for Rasmusen's classes to be limited, his ability to post to the University-sponsored internet be limited, or even his termination (of course, Indiana U could do this, but it would have to limit all political speech equally), arguing he has violated a "code of ethics."  But such non-sense can not be true of speech occurring outside of class, where there is no pressure on students and the professor's views are clearly his own.  Had Rasmusen engaged in an unnecessary introduction of his views in his business classes, or grade based on his views, he would have been in violation of AAUP standards; and indeed would be violating the academic freedom rights of his students. 
IU Law Professor Heidt, who wrote a highly criticized piece against race preferences last year, hit the nail on the head.  "Ideas harm people," he said. "You can't run a university with any kind of free inquiry if you're worrying about harming people. I don't see an academic having any kind of concern on that score. It's an essential part of teaching people." Heidt continued, "These are adults, and they're living in the world, and they're going to be offended in the world," he says. "You don't need everybody agreeing with you to study hard."
This is where it is useful to contrast this case to U-Michigan's course "How to be Gay?", which the institution has defended as within Halperin's academic freedom.  Here, the professor has endorsed, as opposed to Rasmusen's rejection, of the gay lifestyle.  The endorsement has come directly in the content of the class, which the University officially condones by sponsoring and paying for class costs. Further, it would not be necessary to an English course's survey of gay literature or even the gay lifestyle to endorse (or reject) the lifestyle itself. Although Halperin is certainly entitled to espouse and even teach his opinion, he is very close to the line in AAUP ethics standards and must be careful not to grade or interfere with his opposition's opinions using his position as professor. The irony is that one can see the double-standard emerging in academia, where a David Halperin is supported by his institution (and even put upon a pedestal) and Eric Rasmusen is attacked to no end.

November 6, 2003, Thursday, 03:46
Affirmative Action Bake Sales on the Rise Across the Nation.
Continuing a movement started at U-Michigan over a year ago by The Michigan Review, students against race preferences across the country have been hosting bake sales where baked goods are offered at variable prices depending on the customer's ethinicity.  In Washington and a few other universities, the sales have been shut down by administrators or shouted down by protestors, although most sales simply raise awareness to the issue. The most recent, at Indiana University, highlights the argumentive flavor of this debate. Following the elitist assumption that those who disagree don't "understand," a student was quoted as saying, "The University failed because they did not educate these people who don't understand what affirmative action is," and, "People don't understand the concept of 'white privilege' that is taught in the classes," [she] said. "Personally, I feel sorry for these guys out here that are trying to argue their point because I think it is all about ignorance."  The, 'if your wrong in our opinion, we must re-educate you' is reminiscent of Orwell. Finally, my favorite defense of race preferences, "As black people, we don't get more benefits than Hispanics," he said. "That's how misconceptions get spread." I suppose because another group also gets the same treatment, that makes it right.

"People who disagree really don't know."
The critical mind always questions this kind of assertion.  When "people" who disagree are labelled as ignorant merely based upon their disagreement, you know there is no "open, honest discussion of the history of race in this country."  This Michigan State University State Journal piece about an affirmative action panel, captures several priceless tidbits, including the quote in the headline above by Tabitha Swift.

November 5, 2003, Wednesday, 08:32
IBM and U-M to work on Seamless Audio-Visual Classroom of Future
The U-Michigan has selected IBM to work in a joint project on teching up the future classroom.  The choice of IBM should be no surprise to my most regular readers (the original Czar's Court of 1996).  According to my 1994 investigative expose on U-M's involvement in the NSFNET (the precursor to the modern internet, started in 1987 here in Ann Arbor), U-M and IBM have a had an overly cozy relationship since 1986 when Dr. Douglas Van Houweling (President, Internet2 / UCAID, then-Vice Provost for Information Technology at U-M) showed bidding favoritism to IBM over Amdahl in a quid pro quo related the purchase of small supercomputer mainframe.  IBM has done some good things in its many years in the industry, but it was also able to get away with selling non-competitively priced and lower quality routers to U-M who passed on those costs to the National Science Foundation (during the late eighties and early nineties, U-M routinely used Cisco branded routers for its own network, privately bragging about their superior quality and 33% cost of the IBM routers it used to build the national higher education network). It was a simple case of industrial policy subsidizing an eventual loser in the networking field.

November 5, 2003, Wednesday, 00:23
Lieberman's New Higher Education Platform.  A "Mixed Bag."
Here's a synopsis of Presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman's higher education platform.  There are some good ideas in there, and with some tweaking could be great ideas.  Lieberman does pander to the pro race-preferences forces, but there is a seed of something deeper embedded within his type of affirmative action.  The New Haven Register writes, " Under Lieberman’s plan, the Department of Education would collect and publicize schools’ admission statistics and graduation rates. The agency would financially reward schools that admit and graduate more low-income and minority students."  STANDARDS! Minority retention as a relevant measure of [ideally, Zarko Research would remove the "admit" from that passage and focus on retaining and graduating minorities] of racial progress! Also, "Elementary and high school curriculums would be crafted toward helping students excel in college, while high school teachers would be closely evaluated based on performance, and be asked to do "double duty" as college admissions advisers," and Lieberman would drastically increase financial aid [we agree] with the real kicker, "... while high school teachers would be closely evaluated based on performance, and be asked to do "double duty" as college admissions advisers ...". MORE STANDARDS!
Predictably, the universities' lobbying organs labelled it a "mixed bag," agreeing with the increased Pell Grants (more pork), but disagreeing with those pesky standards.  Becky Timmons, of the American Council on Education, said, "The implementation of new regulations and requirements carries a pretty hefty price tag." Clara Lovett, president of the American Association for Higher Education, also enjoyed that more money for financial aid part, but found the problem with standards to be, well, that they are ... too standard. Paraphrasing, Lovett said, 'A private school with highly competitive admissions may, for example, retain more students than a local public college that students attend part time.' Quoting Lovett, "It’s a good idea, however, different kinds of students attend different kinds of universities. … It’s really kind of a dangerous approach for that reason."  Of course, any set of standards can be customized to different situations or types of university, or even to specific universities. If the federal taxpayer is giving money to these institutions, he has a right to attach standards to its use. Lieberman has it right on two of the big three paths (standards and accountability, class destratification, and choice, the latter of which heis missing) to education reform.

November 2, 2003, Sunday, 23:35
In San Jose, its more about socioeconomics than race.
Again and again, in way after way, evidence appears about the divide in culture being as much if not more about class differences than it is race.  This San Jose Mercury News piece tells the story of a principal who had to desegregate his high school campus, several times.  The criteria of desegregation?  Car ownership and leaving campus for lunch.  Even after banning lunch trips off-campus, the "rich kids" would eat their lunches in their cars. So the principal banned that, and now even is moving toward seating charts in classrooms.  Trying to change human nature is difficult, indeed.  The moral of this story though - socioeconomic desegregation solves both racial and class segregation, and trying to solve racial segregation without the other would be futile anyway.

November 2, 2003, Sunday, 08:01
Democrats Dirty Secrets - Past Moderation on Affirmative Action.
According to Al Sharpton in the Detroit News, we can't have moderates in the Democratic Party on the affirmative action issue.  Either you're all for it as he sees it, or you've got an "anti-black" agenda. Reminiscent of Goldwater's 'extremism in the defense of liberty is a virtue, and moderation a vice' statement, Sharpton is carrying the party down the path of the politics of (self) destruction. Now, in addition to Dean - Lieberman, Kerry, and Gephardt are all conforming, backing away from their previous statements. The story here though is that none of the candidates have the courage to stand behind their previous moderate statements, and rather have backed away from them in favor of pandering.  Dean had it right in 95, when he said socioeconomic preferences could achieve the same effect and help even more individuals up.  Lieberman supported Prop 209, indirectly at least, and Kerry and Gephardt seemingly supported Clinton's (now there's a crime for Democrat) with Reno to end "quota-based" policies (which are still illegal and were then) for unqualified applicants in the federal hiring system.  None of these arguments were, or are, "right-wing" or conservative, as the list of people supporting them demonstrates.  But race has become a poisonous issue warping all debate.  Hopefully some Democrats with one of these four candidates will come to realize how this is so, and Sharpton's witchhunt will have a positive effect (in revealing itself for what it is).

October 29, 2003 Wednesday 21:02
Sharpton Lambastes Howard Dean on his support of . . .  socio-economic preferences instead of race preferences.
Echoing a theme raised by Zarko Research throughout this past year, Howard Dean endorsed socio-economic preferences on CNN in 1995.  Here is today's clip from this Washington Post piece:
"Any so-called African American leader that would endorse Dean despite his anti-black record is mortgaging the future of our struggle for civil rights and social justice," Sharpton said. His statement cited a 1995 interview in which Dean appeared to question the need for affirmative action programs based solely on race. "I think we ought to look at affirmative action programs based not on race but on class," Dean said on CNN's "Late Edition."

October 29, 2003.00:33.

September Affirmative Action Panel at U-M Reveals First Amendment Problems with  "New" Policy in Wake of Grutter and Gratz Decisions.
Essays must be "risky but not too risky," scientist intentionally witheld contrary regression data.

by Chetly Zarko

   On September 17, 2003 a public panel discussion was convened by the University of Michigan administration. The panel participants were all University administrators or researchers who have taken public positions in favor of race preferences. They made various statements that call into question the real nature of change since June, raise first amendment questions related to the weighting of the new essays, and question the veracity of previous statements by the same individuals.
   The panel, titled Affirmative Action Rulings:  How Will They Impact Our Campus was recently replayed on local cable. The videotapes provide a veritable goldmine of priceless quotes.  The author attended this panel in September after requesting in writing that the University balance the discussion by including some of the known opponents of race preferences, but was told the purpose of the panel was strictly "informational" (Perhaps even more reason to include an alternative viewpoint). The information was designed to address issues related to the legal decisions and the August 28th announcement of a new "holistic" admissions policy relying heavily on essay questions related to a prospective student's "diversity contribution."
  Theodore Spencer, Director, Undergraduate Admission, had a remarkable thing to say when asked by an audience member later in the session to more precisely define what the evaluative criteria in the new "holistic" process was.  "We will look for them [essay writers] to take a bit of risk, but we don't want them to take too much risk to where they can offend the reader or someone else.  We will look for all those kinds of things that the U still feels are important ... The only thing we've done ... we've rearranged them so that ... they are no longer given points ..."  So there you have it, a prima facie admission that the content of the essay will be judged on unconstitutional grounds ("offensiveness"), and that the point system's values have not been changed ("the only thing we've done ... rearranged them") except to take off the quantifications.  This statement was perhaps the most remarkable of the evening.

  Earlier in the session, Dean of Students and co-moderator Edward Willis kicked off the question and answer session with a prepared question to each panelist.  Willis began with a question to Professor Emerita Patricia Gurin, in clear reference to an opinion analysis this author had written for The Wall Street Journal on May 16th. That piece had criticized Gurin for making rosy claims about a dataset she used, when her husband had co-authored an executive summary 5 years earlier reporting a very 'mixed bag' of conclusions, including that racial tension actually increased on campus over a student's four years, that blacks self-segregated, and that numerical diversity alone had no effect (without 'diversity classes'). The Journal piece also criticized U-M for withholding under FOIA the raw data that would have proved or disproved these concerns conclusively, and that scientists had been consistently refused access to this raw data.
   Willis asked, "Some opponents" say that the Michigan Student Study data [that she used in her 1999 expert testimony to the Court in Grutter] show "increased racial tension.  Are these arguments valid?"  Gurin, obviously expecting the question, immediately replied, almost with a laugh, "I want to make five points ... quickly." I remember thinking at the time that this was a bit of overkill, but then again, the charges against her research from many angles are quite serious. Gurin continued,  "the claim of increased tension ... has no way to be tested.  We don't have a baseline, before there was any race-conscious admissions policy. We have no real evidence about there was increased racial tension because race conscious policies or not."  Certainly, Gurin is quite correct about the lack of a baseline to compare against non racial admissions policies, but this criticism also affects the question of whether race conscious admissions have educational benefits, meaning that her expert testimony assertions had no baseline.  When you attack your critics, you must be careful not to do so with a double-edged sword. Of course, the dataset provides itself with a weak internal baseline, by comparing the freshman, sophomore, and senior year's questions (all of whom experienced the ongoing U-M system of diversity); and the hidden result never reported in Gurin's expert testimony is that perceived racial tension on campus actually increased from freshman to senior year. Her better defense could have been her second point, something U-M has stuck to since May.  She argued that the data show a difference between student perceptions of campus climate and students perceptions of their own relationships.  She admits that 25% (and increasing over time) of white students perceive campus tension, whereas only 1-7% (how precise!) of the same students perceive racial tension in their own lives.  Here's the kicker, and its a new insight into the study and Gurin's beliefs about it.  Gurin says the campus tension does not come racial diversity, "it probably" comes from "graffiti" and the "media", but not from students interacting.  How does she know?  "We've tried to understand where the tension comes from ... none of the regressions work" in finding the answer.  This is a significant revelation.  Gurin just admitted that she and her group looked, and looked hard, for an answer to the troublesome data.  They ran regressions, none of which were reported to the Court or peer reviewers. They just couldn't find it.  So she's left with a "probably ... graffiti and the media", (this of course all ignores the failure to account for set response and attribution bias which could explain why perceptions of external reality and personal reality differ, but that is a more technical concern) but most significantly, she never reported the regressions that don't work to the Court.

An unexplained variable is certainly something the judge and world was entitled to know about. Given the admission that she looked, couldn't find an answer, and never reported those regressions in her expert testimony; the author, now, for the first time, will make the assertion that Gurin committed academic fraud as defined by her profession's standards. I  believe that Ms. Gurin's motivations may been sub-conscious, or that she firmly believed she was in the right, but very few people think of themselves as ill-motivated (the essence of attribution bias, BTW). Scientific integrity requires that one report the known weaknesses in one's own work.  

October 28, 2003 Tues. 00:46
" ... the questions weren’t Black-oriented enough."
Check out this absurdity from The Wilmington Journal, a division of the "Black Press USA Network."  The article also criticizes (eats its own) the Congressional Black Caucus for agreeing to allow Fox TV Network to co-sponsor the Fox Theatre/Detroit debate, and supports Comcast's long-standing decision not air Fox News channel in urban Detroit.   Fox News has given Al Sharpton considerable airplay, and merely because it is the most "conservative" of the news channels is not a sufficient reason to want to self-censor it or to prevent the debate from targetting its audience (indeed, one would expect the Democrats to reach out to independents and conservatives if they have any chance of winning, and only airing a debate on channels most likely to appeal to people who are already going to vote Democratic would seem to be the opposite of what needs to be done).   So, this reasoning is more foolish than it is racist (whose to say all what "black issues" are or that all blacks subscribe to the same political views on those issues).

October 23, 2003 22:33
U-M TV Replays of September Affirmative Action Panel. Spencer's "Risky but not too risky" Essays, Gurin Essentially Admits Her Fraud on the Court.
The September 17, 2003 panel discussion Affirmative Action Rulings:  How Will They Impact Our Campus is being replayed on Channel 22 (Comcast, Ann Arbor, see local listings).  Oct 24 (tonight) at 130am it will replay, and also on Oct 29 at 1210am. The videotapes provide a veritable goldmine of priceless quotes.
  Theodore Spencer, Director, Undergraduate Admission, had a remarkable thing to say when asked by an audience member later in the session to more precisely define what the evaluative criteria in the new "holistic" process was.  "We will look for them [essay writers] to take a bit of risk, but we don't want them to take too much risk to where they can offend the reader or someone else.  We will look for all those kinds of things that the U still feels are important ... The only thing we've done ... we've rearranged them so that ... they are no longer given points ..."  So there you have it, a prima facie admission that the content of the essay will be judged on unconstitutional grounds ("offensiveness"), and that the point system's values have not been changed ("the only thing we've done ... rearranged them") except to take off the quantifications.  This statement was perhaps the most remarkable of the evening.
  Earlier in the session, Dean of Students and co-moderator Edward Willis kicked off the question and answer session with a prepared question to each panelist.  Willis began with a question to Professor Emerita Patricia Gurin, asking, "Some opponents" say the Michigan Student Study data show "increased racial tension.  Are these arguments valid?"  Gurin, obviously expecting the question, immediately replied, almost with a laugh, "I want to make five points ... quickly." I remember thinking at the time that this was a bit of overkill, but then again, the charges against her research from many angles are quite serious. Gurin continued,  "the claim of increased tension ... has no way to be tested.  We don't have a baseline, before there was any race-conscious admissions policy. We have no real evidence about there was increased racial tension because race conscious policies or not."  Certainly, Gurin is quite correct about the lack of a baseline to compare against non racial admissions policies, but this criticism also affects the question of whether race conscious admissions have educational benefits, meaning that her expert testimony's claims had no baseline.  When you attack your critics, you must be careful not to do so with a double-edged sword. Of course, the dataset provides itself with a weak internal baseline, by comparing the freshman, sophomore, and senior year's questions (all of whom experienced the ongoing U-M system of diversity); and the hidden result never reported in Gurin's expert testimony is that perceived racial tension on campus actually increased from freshman to senior year. Her better defense should have been her second point, something U-M has stuck to since May.  She argued that the data show a difference between student perceptions of campus climate and students perceptions of their own relationships.  She admits that 25% (and increasing over time) of white students perceive campus tension, whereas only 1-7% (how precise!) of the same students perceive racial tension in their own lives.  Here's the kicker, and its a new insight into the study and Gurin's beliefs about it.  Gurin says the campus tension does not come racial diversity, "it probably" comes from "graffiti" and the "media", but not from students interacting.  How does she know?  "We've tried to understand where the tension comes from ... none of the regressions work" in finding the answer.  WOW!  Gurin just admitted that she and her group looked, and looked hard, for an answer to the troublesome data.  They ran regressions, none of which were reported to the Court or peer reviewers. They just couldn't find it.  So she's left with a "probably ... graffiti and the media", (this of course all ignores the failure to account for set response and attribution bias which could explain why perceptions of external reality and personal reality differ, but that is a more technical concern) but most significantly, she never reported the regressions that don't work to the Court. 
  An unexplained variable is certainly something the judge and world was entitled to know about. Given the admission that she looked, couldn't find an answer, and never reported those regressions in her expert testimony; the Czar's Court now, for the first time, will make the assertion that Gurin committed academic fraud as defined by her profession's standards. We  believe that Ms. Gurin's motivations may been sub-conscious, or that she firmly believed she was in the right, but very few people think of themselves as ill-motivated (the essence of attribution bias, BTW). Scientific integrity requires that one report the known weaknesses in one's own work.   Gurin's third, fourth, and fifth points all seem to blend into the same argument, that we should expect tension when we put different people together, and that the tension is perhaps good in creating an opportunity to overcome obstacles and pre-existing systemic differences (this "societal benefit" is far afield from the notion that there are "educational benefits" in diversity, but nonetheless ... ).

October 21, 2003 18:41
Scientist Suggests Blacks Score Higher on the "Harder" SAT Questions.
Here's a real dinger, appearing November's issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and previously in the Harvard Educational Review (the alleged academic seal of approval for Patricia Gurin's work). A former employee for the  SAT's corporate owners (Education Testing Service, ETS), Roy Freedle, claims that year's worth of data show blacks score higher on the harder questions (ETS test questions do range in difficulty), and that ETS subtlely tried to convince him not to proceed with work on his theory. Freedle claims that a "revised SAT" (R-SAT) by scaling the scores based on the harder question responses, and that this would eliminate much of the race bias in the test.  It is interesting to note that ETS withheld further data from him once his first study was done, and that the nature of public policy across the 50 states is determined by the policies and secret data inside one or two testing corporations.  We haven't fully analyzed the quality of Freedle's work yet, but a few questions come to mind immediately.
 Just which questions are "harder"?  Why are blacks doing worse on the easier questions?  Zarko Research acknowledge's there is a "race bias" in the scores reported by standardized testing.  The question is whether the "bias" is caused by the way the test is written or is an actual measurement of the failure of schools and social and cultural conditions of relative poverty (I will ignore the unreasonable hypothesis that there are actual intelligence differences among the races, although a reasonable variant of this would be that there are different intelligence styles among the races), or some combination thereof.  The key then becomes measuring of the variance comes from each factor.

October 20, 2003 06:37
Zarko Research Defends University Budget Cuts in Residence Halls.
I just thought, for the record, I'd repost my comments defending a little corner of fiscal responsibility in the University. The administration doesn't often give me the opportunity to defend their actions, so I'm taking it here.  Both Goodspeed's and Airbeagle's blog's have criticized the U for cutting 'yet another student service.'  I responded on both, but have clipped my Airbeagle (love the name and photo, BTW) response here. This is not to say that the entire U or budget is fiscally responsible when looked at globally (it isn't), but it was a right decision in this area. Actually, I'm going to make the daring, and unusual, defense of the university here. The res hall libraries are duplicative, no serious student uses them in place of the UGLI or undergrad (unless students have gotten less serious in the last 10 years), and the resources they offer are tiny, while the res hall internet connections can easily make up for the difference. I could see maintaining the libraries strictly on north campus, but none on central campus. If you're too lazy to walk to the Grad (I used UGLi maybe only a few times) or UGLi....  This defense of every last benefit the U has bestowed upon people, every last job, etc. is typical of the liberal mindset. If I was running the U, they'd have been gone 10 years ago (definitely keep the computer labs). Keep in mind everyone, you're paying those tuition expansions precisely for a dozen reasons like this one.   ... which is the 2 cents of Chetly Zarko @ 05:14 on 18-Oct-03

October 18, 2003 18:52
Berkeley Admissions Dispute Explodes.  Chancellor attacks Regents.  Special insight on U-C Berkeley admissions from old U-Michigan documents.
In early October, a report by Regent Chairman John J. Moores (appointed by Democratic Governor Gray Davis) started a firestorm of controversy when he authored a report implicitly questioning the whether Berkeley admissions policies were complying with California state law Prop 209. Moores's report examined statistically the bottom 400 of the Berkeley class, questioning why their SATs ranged from 600 to 1000 but making no conclusions as to whether they were predominantly minority. At the same it noted that over 600 students with SATs over 1500 were denied admission.  The report concluded "might not be compatible with [its] goal of maintaining academic excellence," but refused to speculate as to what caused these admissions discrepancies.

According to the L.A. Times, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl wrote in an e-mail that his boss had "undermined confidence" in Berkeley's admissions procedures saying, "You have done the university a great disservice and shown open contempt for reasoned discourse about complex issues."  Moores'es told the Times "A little transparency is a wonderful thing - and it would be good for this university," he said. Bravo to Moores. The academy and left is once again trying to eat one of its own. Apparently, again, one can be racist without mentioning race; and one has contempt for discourse even though actually increasing it.  As Orwell wrote in the book 1984, "Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense."

In 2000, Zarko Research published documents from Bentley Historical Library including one that James Duderstadt had obtained in 1989 from contacts at Berkeley. This document was a 50 page confidential Berkeley admissions report, concluding that Berkeley's "flexible targets" program, which set a floor of 40% of the admissions pool being allocated for "special needs" admissions could be scaled back to as little as 5% while still maintaining "diversity."  The same report also suggested that socio-economic diversity was grossly lagging and that Berkeley needed to do more in that area, and that socio-economic programs would automatically resovle some of the other admissions disparity.  It concluded that such reform would increased "academic excellence" at Berkeley. It is too bad the there wasn't a "little transparency" at Berkeley in 1989, as such reform 7 years before Prop 209 might have eased the way for the admissions process when preferences were outlawed in 1996.  Once again, internal proof that vast race preference programs aren't necessary.

Feature Update.  Diversity Science Information.
I have posted in a timeline format an archive of how my Wall Street Journal publication on Pat Gurin's questionable diversity science came to pass, begining with the origination of the source documents and ending August 5, 2003, and new information about its consequences and U-M's behind-the-scenes maneuvering to preclude its publication. I also include some of my process in thinking through the matter.

October 17, 2003 11:13
Not a chance. The electoral journey of Prop 54
by Ward Connerly
Connerly writes here in the National Review Online on his feelings on why Prop 54 failed. He's correct about coalitional politics but I think overanalyzes the loss a bit with regard to the issue.

October 16, 2003 14:37
More on U-Michigan Public Safety Trespass Enforcement.
Zarko Research's investigation on DPS is proceeding, and before a final report is made I am awaiting a response to a FOIA request to corroborate a story of selective enforcement.  Captain Joe Piersanti actually insisted that the author use FOIA on a simple question relating to what materials the Ann Arbor News routinely receives and the policies for media disclosure.  Apparently not liking the direction of the other questions he was asked (relating to due process, officers leaving jurisdiction, unrelated activities leading to trespass citation, etc.), Captain Piersanti suggested that for him to look up the media disclosure policies would be "a waste of his time."  I of course asked these simple questions about media disclosure policy at the end of the interview because I felt as if the Captian wasn't being fully cooperative and wanted to ascertain that all members of the public were being given information equally.  The Captain actually betrayed some of his bias towards the mega-media when he admitted he was being more cautious because I "could be anybody". Even if I was "anybody," when a member of the public is asking questions about police policy, one would think that they're entitled to the same answer given to the corporate media.  Although the FOIA request seeks other more specific information, we still do not know what or whether DPS even has a formalized media disclosure policy, and Piersanti volunteered that DPS had a "good relationship with the Ann Arbor News."

October 15, 2003  00:00
Justice Stevens releases notes from Gratz and Grutter.  Admits amici bean counting. The "consensus of the dark green briefs" and corporate theocracy - a supreme court abdicating its power.

With the intellectual courage of a fox intruding into a henhouse and laughing at the farmer maintaining the hens, Justice John Paul Stevens released his notes of the landmark decisions in Gratz and Grutter.  It turns out he explicitly allowed Lee Bollinger's strategy of lining up corporate amicus submissions to influence his decision and that he legislated from the bench in encouraging the Court (ultimately O'Connor) not to rule "in technical detail" on the stare decisis question of whether Powell's dicta in his concurrence in Bakke constituted precedent (indeed, O'Connor just accepted it wholesale, fiating it as the new majority ruling, without opining as to whether it was previously binding precedent). Quoting a Legal Times analysis (which I will link to when it becomes available) and Stevens himself, "In the final analysis," Stevens concluded, his argument boiled down to "who should decide" whether affirmative action should continue - "the nine of us sitting in the chambers of the Supreme Court," as he put it, or "the accumulated wisdom of the country's leaders." That wisdom, he said, was convincingly shown by "the powerful consensus of the dark green briefs." As much as I am against "legislating from the bench," the nine people on the court are ultimately the final bastion of protection of individual legal rights from the whims of special interest politicians or state agencies bent on a political goal.  The nine are supposed to be a barrier to "excessive legislation" by the states or Congress. They abdicated this role, in favor of letting corporate leaders decide the individual fates of the people. As I've said before, the Czar's Court has never favored "state's rights" over "individual rights" (it does however favor "state's rights" over federal rights when the area of concern is not detailed to the federal government by the Constitution).

Curt Levey, of CIR, wondered why he chose to count the number of "leaders" as opposed to looking at the opinion polls showing exactly the opposite.  I'm waiting for the next wisecracker lawyer who actually introduces an opinion poll into oral argument, and when chastised, quotes Stevens.  Why not?  Proving the infinite wisdom of a legal friend of mine who must remain anonymous, "There is