The Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute has issued a report listing several Arizona university programs as vulnerable to legal challenge if voters there bar public colleges and other state agencies from using racial, ethnic, and gender preferences.

Ward Connerly, who played a key role in the successful campaigns to persuade California, Michigan, and Washington State voters to ban affirmative-action preferences, has named Arizona as one of five states where he hopes to get similar measures on the ballot in November 2008.

In a report issued this week, the libertarian-leaning Goldwater Institute says, “The question of whether Arizona should ban racial classifications is not an abstraction. Public officials at every level of Arizona government have resorted to classifying their constituents on the basis of race, color, national origin, and sex, and have apportioned opportunities on that basis.”

In terms of employment, the Arizona Board of Regents has a policy stating that public colleges should give preference to job candidates from certain racial and ethnic groups in order, the policy says, to “correct underutilization as identified in university affirmative-action plans.”

Northern Arizona University’s affirmative-action policy “specifies percentage goals for women and minorities in certain jobs and establishes methods for meeting those goals,” while the University of Arizona’s affirmative-action office sets goals for minority hiring for certain job groups, the Goldwater Institute report says.

The state universities also have many programs for students that use racial preferences, including a University of Arizona office devoted to recruiting students from certain minority groups and a Northern Arizona University program that provides academic assistance to freshmen and uses race as a criterion for acceptance, the report says.

A statement issued by the Goldwater Institute says “government entities are rarely candid about whether and the extent to which they confer preferences on the basis of race, color, or sex,” so the programs listed in its report “may represent only the tip of the Arizona preference iceberg.” —Peter Schmidt