At long last, some state legislatures have begun reacting to the “wokeness” epidemic that has consumed both K-12 and higher education.
Unfortunately, many of these bills are likely doomed to accomplish little or nothing because they fail to address an essential issue: enforcement. Particularly in the context of public universities, expecting state employees to simply obey laws that forbid practices they consider moral imperatives is naïve.
Expecting state employees to simply obey anti-affirmative-action laws is naïve.
Take California’s ban on affirmative action. For decades, it has been illegal for California institutions to give racial preference in admissions, hiring, or contracting. Despite this clear, politically popular law, have California state universities ended their use of racial preferences? Anyone familiar with the UC System will tell you they have not.
Instead, state employees violate the law and continue such practices. UC Berkeley’s law-school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, typifies this prevailing attitude. In a recently surfaced video from earlier this year, this head of a public law school admits he and his school violate California law, via a process he calls “unstated affirmative action”: