1) Prop 2 Sends Divisive Message
Editorial, Detroit Free Press
November 8, 2006
The passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative on Tuesday leaves the state torn by hard and hardened feelings that will not be easily salved. Although a ban on affirmative action might allow at least half the state to see Michigan as a place with a level playing field or some such cliche, enactment of MCRI paints the state as hostile to minorities. Now that they've won, Proposal 2 supporters should not continue to pursue divisive challenges. When opponents raised concerns over the viability of gender-based health programs and domestic violence shelters that accommodate only women, MCRI leaders dismissed such arguments as red herrings. They must not now come back and challenge sensible programs.
full editorial

2) Ward Connerly Criticized for KKK Comment
Article, Forbes.com
November 7, 2006
Opponents are criticizing a key backer of a ballot initiative to end public affirmative action programs in Michigan after he made comments that appeared to welcome the Ku Klux Klan's support... Connerly, who is black, defended his remark, saying he accepts support for banning affirmative action wherever he finds it.
full story

3) U-M President Says She'll Go to Court over Affirmative Action Ban
Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki
Article, Detroit Free Press
November 8, 2006
University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman says the school will explore its legal options after the state's voters approved a ban on affirmative action programs that offer preferences to women and minorities.... Proposal 2, which 58 percent of the voters supported with 99 percent the precincts reporting, makes Michigan the third state in the nation to outlaw preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes.
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4) Officials Look for Options after Ban
Lori Higgins and Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki
Article, Detroit Free Press
November 12, 2006
Julius Tunstull already thinks the city of Detroit doesn't do enough for minority contractors. He can't imagine what it'll be like when the voter-approved ban on affirmative action takes effect Dec. 22. The ban would make illegal the city's use of a formula for awarding bids that provides an edge to women and minority contractors. "It'll just be worse," Tunstull, who is black, said Friday. He is owner of Tunstull Building Co. in Detroit, a small company that specializes in residential, industrial and commercial construction. Without affirmative action, minority and women contractors "would be at a disadvantage. They're just going to pass us up," he said.
full story

5) College Leaders Reach into Their Wallets to Help Defeat Michigan's Proposed Ban on Preferences
Peter Schmidt
Article, The Chronicle of Higher Education
November 6, 2006
Some national higher-education associations are among the groups and people who have been reaching deeply into their pockets to try to defeat a Michigan ballot measure to limit affirmative action. The measure, known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which will appear on Tuesday's ballot as Proposal 2, would amend the Constitution of the Great Lakes State to prohibit all state agencies, including public colleges, from operating affirmative-action programs that grant preferences based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or gender (The Chronicle, October 27). As of last week, One United Michigan, the chief campaign organization formed to oppose the ballot measure, had raised more than $4. 6-million from various sources, while the two groups created to promote the measure had raised about $1. 4-million. Among the organizations that have pitched in to help defeat the measure, the Law School Admission Council donated $250,000 to One United Michigan, while the Association of American Universities gave $7,500. The Association of American Medical Colleges donated $10,000 to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a Washington-based coalition of civil-rights organizations, to help finance its efforts to defeat Proposal 2.
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6) Bias Against Minorities in Math and Science Continues
Jonathan David Farley
Op-Ed, Berkeley Daily Planet
November 10, 2006
It was a Cold War love story. Julia Robinson had never met the man she was writing. He was from Leningrad; she was from Berkeley. And yet they did one of the most precious things a man and a woman can do together. They did mathematics. And they did that beautifully, solving one of the twentieth century's greatest conundrums, Hilbert's "Tenth Problem." This puzzle had to do with how you tell if you can solve a "Diophantine equation," an equation exactly like the kind you dreaded in high school, like "xy-x2=0." And yet when the message went round the world--"Hilbert's Tenth Problem has been solved by Julia Robinson of Berkeley!"--and reporters flocked to the University of California to interview Professor Robinson, they couldn't find her. She was not Professor Robinson. The University of California would not give Julia Robinson a job... What the elite universities prefer is "the Harvard Shuffle." "Get me Nelson Mandela," the joke goes in African-American academic circles, a mimicry of a university president looking to recruit a new black faculty member. High-profile or already established black academics move from Harvard to Princeton to Stanford, and, each time they move, their new institution trumpets its diversity, even though the same people are being counted two or three times. (Last year, Stanford hired 5 African-Americans, and lost 4.) American universities hire just enough minorities to keep from being accused of racism, although happily the façade is now peeling away.
full op-ed

7) Minorities Getting More State Business
Article, The Miami Herald
November 14, 2006
Gov. Jeb Bush said Monday that the state's spending on contracts with businesses owned by minority group members and women has nearly tripled since he abolished affirmative action nearly eight years ago. A record $761.2 million was spent with certified minority and female-owned contractors in the last budget year, which ended June 30. That's $497 million, or 189 percent, more than for the 1998-99 budget year, the governor's office said. ''I applaud the commitment of state agency managers and purchasing agents who continue to look for new and innovative ways to expand diversity in state contracting and increase opportunities for all Florida businesses,'' Bush said.
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