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March 19, 2008, 04:00 PM ET
Federal Judge Upholds Michigan's Affirmative-Action Ban
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit by opponents of Proposal 2 — Michigan’s voter-approved referendum outlawing the use of affirmative-action preferences by public colleges and other state agencies — who claimed that the law was unconstitutional, Sara Hebel reports on The Chronicle’s News Blog. An article in the Detroit Free Press quoted U.S. District Judge David Lawson as saying in his ruling that the law is constitutional and that “to impugn the motives of 58 percent of Michigan’s electorate, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances which do not exist here, simply is not warranted on this record.”
Meanwhile the lawyer representing the law’s opponents, among them a group of minority students who argue that the law unfairly shuts them out of the university-admissions process, has said he will appeal the ruling, the Free Press reporter, David Ashenfelter, writes.
Ironically, elsewhere in the Great Lakes state, a faculty-led committee at the University of Michigan is calling on the institution to do more to diversify its faculty, The Grand Rapids Press reports.
The reporter, Dave Gershman, notes that according to a report by the Committee for a Multicultural University,
the percentage of blacks and Hispanics, after increasing slowly for several years, appears to have hit a plateau earlier this decade. Blacks are 5.3 percent of the faculty, up from 4.3 percent in 1994. Hispanics are 3 percent of the faculty, up from 1.9 percent in 1994. Asian and Pacific Islanders are now 14.2 percent of the faculty, up from 8 percent in 1994.
Furthermore, he quotes Billy Joe Evans, a professor emeritus who chairs the committee, as saying that the proportion of black and Hispanic assistant professors has declined since 2001.
Categories: Faculty-hiring, General-interest
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