At UC, It Seems, Free Speech Isn’t Politically Correct

Recently, 14 University of California students sent an open letter to several California newspapers calling on me to resign from the UC Board of Regents.

My first reaction was, “Children will be children.” Although I was tempted to dismiss the letter as grandstanding, there are a few things about it that warrant a response.

UC regents serve 12-year terms without compensation. While such appointments deliver a small measure of prestige and glory, they are thankless, time-consuming public service assignments. For every person you please, you anger twice as many.

I was appointed in 1993 and confirmed by the California Senate on a 37-0 vote in 1994. At my confirmation, student leaders hailed me as a “breath of fresh air.” Why?

From the outset, I consistently voted to slow the rate of increase in fees and was usually among the first approached by student representatives when issues concerned them. I have voted with student regents more than any other regent.

On one issue, however, I happen to be out of step with most of the university family, particularly student “leaders,” and that is the appropriateness of racial, gender and ethnic preferences. I vehemently oppose such practices and they support them. Because I dare to disagree, they want me to resign.

How quickly the air becomes stale when you disagree with some people.

I was not the only regent who voted against racial and gender preferences. So did 14 others. Why am I the only one being singled out for banishment from the hallowed halls of academia? Could it be that my critics fear I might keep looking under the rocks and find other distasteful practices, such as separate graduation ceremonies based on race and ethnicity? Or a confusing, duplicative and wasteful system of “diversity” courses that even many faculty members privately question? Or other university-sanctioned practices that divide our students along racial lines and waste precious resources?

Because I believe that giving preferences based on race, sex and skin color is a form of discrimination and am asserting my right as a private citizen to express my opposition to such conduct, these students want me gone. This is intellectual conformity at its worst. I have learned the hard way how fickle, intolerant, intellectually lazy and politically naive some of these students can be. They seek to silence their opposition--whom they see as anyone who does not agree with them on every issue--by having them leave the arena of debate.

It never ceases to amaze me that many of those who support racial, gender and ethnic preferences proclaim their allegiance to “diversity,” but want to deny those who disagree with them their right to assert a different point of view.

When I was appointed, I was not informed that I would be required to relinquish my 1st Amendment right of free speech. Nor was I told that I should support the university even when it engaged in conduct that betrayed the Constitution and the deeply held convictions of the people of California.

Although this will come as a surprise to many administrators, faculty, staff and students, public universities belong to the people, not to you. We respect your invaluable contribution to our institutions of higher education and acknowledge that without you, they would be without value. But in the final analysis, we, the people, own these institutions and we, the people, will govern them through our duly appointed boards.

I am not an elected official and I am not running for any office. My first duty as a regent is to the people of California. It is not “politicizing” the university when regents catch the academic establishment straying from the values that we the people hold dear and demand that the university bring itself into compliance with our basic values.

Regents swear to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution. As I read those documents, racial discrimination is against the law. It is therefore idiotic for anyone to suggest that I have a “conflict” when my position as a private citizen is entirely consistent with the policies of the university.

One final comment: On Nov. 5, 1996, the people of California reaffirmed my belief that racial preferences are morally wrong and bad public policy when they adopted by a decisive margin Proposition 209, which reads: “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.”

Proposition 209 applies to the University of California. I expect the courts to affirm soon that this initiative is the law of our state. I suggest that student leaders get comfortable with the reality that a majority of people in this state support Proposition 209 and the race-neutral principle for which it stands. And I suggest that they get comfortable with regents whose “personal ambition” is to attain a society in which no citizens are discriminated against.