Free Republic

For more than a century, UC Berkeley's elite law school has been closely tied to the name of the building that houses it, Boalt Hall.

The media loves firsts. It's obsessively promoting the first gay governor. The first two Muslim anti-Semitic women in the House, one of whom is accused of marrying her brother (the media obviously isn't mentioning that part), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest elected dimwit. It's oddly uninterested in the first Korean-American woman in the House. Well, not so oddly. Rep. Young Kim is a Republican. Kim, 55, would be the first Korean-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives if she defeats her Democratic opponent Gil Cisneros for the open seat in California’s 39th Congressional District in Tuesday’s election....

“It’s incredible you got into Harvard — especially with its racist admission policies!” I heard the sentiment of this impassioned exclamation all too frequently in the months following my acceptance. Everyone guilty of saying it meant well. They probably even believed that the last bit — the one that never failed to provoke an internal grimace — strengthened the compliment, elevating the gravity of my achievement. Of course, I’d happily accept the praise if the sentiments fueling it didn’t have the potential to harm other equally-deserving Harvard hopefuls. Unfortunately, that potential remains strong, more so now than ever. During this...

... When it comes to race, Ms. Mac Donald’s views are more conventionally conservative. She argues that minorities could overcome economic and educational disparities by embracing “bourgeois values.” She opposes all forms of affirmative action, and believes admissions and hiring should be based solely on aptitude tests and objective measures of performance. She even opposes the University of California’s guaranteed-admissions plan, which admits the top 9% of students from every California high school, regardless of the school’s overall performance. The mechanism is a covert way to reintroduce race into admissions, she says, in violation of Proposition 209, which prohibits race...

Medical school cancels honor society because whites and Asians were earning better grades than blacks and Latinos According to this article from NPR, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, in order to get into the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society, you have to be in the top 25% of your graduating class.The school is eliminating the honor society because not enough blacks and Latinos were graduating in the top 25%.I’m not sure how getting rid of this honor society makes anyone better off.On the contrary – I see this as just one more example...

The U.S. Department of Justice is throwing its support behind an anti-affirmative action group that is suing Harvard University over alleged racial discrimination in its admissions policies. In a document filed in federal court on Thursday, the Justice Department said it is siding with Students for Fair Admissions in its request for a trial, currently scheduled to begin in mid-October. The Justice Department said in a press release that Harvard has "failed to show that it does not unlawfully discriminate against Asian Americans." Harvard has filed a motion for summary judgment in its favor, which if approved by a judge...

Elizabeth Heng nearly beat incumbent Democratic congressman Jim Costa in California’s open primaries in early June. The 53–47 outcome would have made her the darling of the national political media, had she been a Democrat. She will face Costa again in the general election in November. My colleague Alexandra DeSanctis wrote an excellent piece last month profiling the young, smart, 33-year-old Republican contender. So this happened yesterday. Heng’s campaign had tried to place this video as an ad on Facebook. It begins with her family’s roots — amidst the horror of Cambodian genocide. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUJXqJ4f_to And Facebook responded with a...

Hard-working, strong Asian-American Republicans are active and vocally supporting the leadership of President Trump while working to instill Republican values and policies in their communities. Kimberly Yee is an American politician and a Republican member of the Arizona Senate representing District 20 since January 14, 2013. Being a candidate for Arizona State Treasurer, Senator Kimberly Yee has been consistent throughout her career in public service and she has earned a reputation at the Arizona State Capitol as a fiscal conservative who advocates for issues on behalf of the taxpayer. Asian Republicans are no longer hidden; they have an active and...

The National Education Association thinks Colin Kaepernick is an ideal role model. Many members, however, may take their loyalty elsewhere. And frankly, they should. On July 1, the NEA honored Kaepernick, along with several other persons and organizations, with a “Human and Civil Rights” award in recognition of the former pro-football star’s campaign “to fight racial oppression through education and social justice activism.” The born-again political revolutionary, who these last couple years has been peddling the idea that police are conducting a nationwide pogrom against innocent blacks, accepted the honor with predictable melodrama. “To me, this is bigger than football...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to revoke guidelines that encourage considering race in the college admissions process as a way of promoting diversity, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The guidelines, put in place in the Obama administration in 2011 and 2016, put forth legal recommendations that Trump officials contend “mislead schools to believe that legal forms of affirmative action are simpler to achieve than the law allows,” the Journal reported, citing two people familiar with the plans. Trump administration officials plan to argue the guidelines go beyond what the Supreme Court has decided on the issue....

Sam Park picks at his lunch at El Torero, a Mexican restaurant in Duluth, a northeastern suburb of Atlanta. It’s a somewhat ironic choice, given that the 32-year-old politician could have picked from dozens of nearby places to emphasize his Korean heritage in a neighborhood where Eastern churches and Asian grocery stores abound. This is home, though. And so the fact that Park knows his tacos as well as his Korean BBQ is kind of the point. Increasingly, the area will be known less as the “Seoul of the South,” than simply the modern iteration of “the South.” Gwinnett County,...

Came across this, and found it interesting. Top 5: Hong Kong 108 Singapore 108 South Korea 106 Japan 105 China 105 Tied for 23rd place: United States 98 Bottom 5: Cameroon 64 Gabon 64 Mozambique 64 Saint Lucia 62 Equatorial Guinea 59 Make of it what you will.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday defended his decision last month to pardon five criminal illegal aliens facing deportation, saying he makes “no apologies.” ... Brown pardoned two Cambodian refugees - one of whom was convicted of domestic violence and the other for drug possession. He also pardoned Daniel Maher, who was convicted of kidnapping and robbery using a firearm; Sergio Mena, who was sentenced in 2003 for drug possession; and Acevedo Alaniz, who was served five months for vehicle theft. Trump criticized the move in a March 31 tweet, saying, “Governor Jerry ‘Moonbeam’ Brown pardoned 5 criminal illegal aliens...

The Trump administration on Friday urged a federal judge to allow for the public disclosure of records related to Harvard’s admissions practices, as part of a lawsuit accusing the elite school of bias against Asian-American applicants. The Justice Department sided with a group suing Harvard for allegedly discriminatory admissions practices. The DOJ told the judge to reject the university’s attempts to shield from public view many case documents that it claims are confidential.

For the first time in California's history, the state has appointed an undocumented resident to a statewide post, announcing the decision just a day after President Donald Trump attacked its immigration approach during a visit to San Diego. The decision made by the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday saw Lizbeth Mateo, a 33-year-old attorney and immigrant rights activist, appointed to serve on a committee that helps increase college access for students from low-income or underserved communities. In announcing the decision, Senate President pro tempore Kevin de León appeared to recognize the move as an act of defiance in the face...

Democratic Governor Jerry Brown once fought to keep out South Vietnamese refugees from being delivered to his state during his first stint as governor of California in the 1970’s. Although he remains silent on the crisis that is happening on the southern border of his state, Brown’s position via legislation previously signed regarding illegal immigrants from Mexico Central America and South America is more favorable than the cool response he gave to the Vietnamese refugees who had escaped the tyrannical Viet Cong.

A former employee of YouTube (a subsidiary of Alphabet, parent of Google) alleged in a recently filed lawsuit that YouTube is discriminating against white and Asian men. “YouTube last year stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because they didn’t help the world’s largest video site achieve its goals for improving diversity,” the suit alleges. Liberal discrimination against white men is nothing new, but many people are caught by surprise to see such explicit discrimination against Asian males in the name of diversity from one of the most progressive companies in one of the most liberal zip codes....

Chinese spies are spreading throughout the United States as part of “a whole-of-society threat,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Tuesday. The problem is exacerbated by the “naivete” of U.S. academics who don’t recognize the intelligence collectors among them. “They’re exploiting the very open research-and-development environment that we have, which we all revere, but they’re taking advantage of it,” he said. “So, one of the things we’re trying to do is view the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat but a whole-of-society threat on their end and I think it’s going to take a whole of-society response by...

More than 100 American colleges and universities house Confucius Institutes, centres of Chinese language and cultural teaching funded and staffed in part with instructors screened by a Chinese government-affiliated entity known as Hanban. The Confucius Institutes may seem to many to be benign outposts offering cultural events programming and non-credit courses in introductory Chinese, calligraphy or Tai Chi, but for nearly as long as the Confucius Institutes have been around – more than 10 years now – they’ve been controversial.

In an apparent rejection of the basic principles of the U.S. economy, a new poll shows that most young people do not support capitalism. The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it. It isn't clear that the young people in the poll would prefer some alternative system, though. Just 33 percent said they supported socialism. The survey had a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. The results of the survey are difficult to interpret, pollsters noted. Capitalism...