Ward Connerly, the infamous anti-affirmative action activist, might be thwarted in Arizona, where an affirmative action ban is supposed to be on the ballot in November. Opponents just filed a lawsuit to block the measure, saying Connerly & Co. used shady methods to collect the 325,000 signatures required to get the measure on the ballot. The opponents might have a shot. A committee of volunteers formed by State Rep. Kyrsten Sinema pored through pages and pages of the petition, finding highly suspicious signatures from "Jimmy Carter," "Jerry Ford," "John Kennedy," and "Robert Kennedy." Someone who signed the name "Momar Kadafie," listed his country as "Saudie Arabia," with an Arizona zip code.

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Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

Affirmative action has been in the news quite a bit lately, with referendums set to appear on ballots in Missouri, Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska come November. I ask you simply, affirmative action: yay or nay? Why or why not?

Richard J Peltz, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is suing two students in the school's Black Law Student Association, the association itself and one other person affiliated with the group. Peltz is alleging defamation after several of his pupils took to the law school's dean and demanded Peltz face punishment for his so-called "hateful and inciting speech" regarding affirmative action.

According to a memo sent to the dean, Peltz is accused of "ranting" about affirmative action; saying affirmative action helps "unqualified black people"; passing out a form on which he asked students to specify their race, claiming their answers would affect their grades; and "denigrating" black students in a debate about affirmative action. The memo then asked that the dean publicly reprimand Peltz, bar him from teaching any course black students would be required to take and to mark on Peltz's personnel file that he is "unable to deal fairly with black students."

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With colleges around the country being sued for exercising affirmative action and right-leaning activists attempting to demolish the practice completely, what's a college admissions board to do in order to maintain diversity while not facing lawsuits? Why, leave it all up to computers, of course!

Juan E Gilbert, an associate professor of computer science at Auburn, has created a software that he says satisfies the demands of both pro and anti-affirmative action parties.

The software works this way: A college decides how many applicants it will admit from that middle group. Then the college picks the criteria it will use to evaluate the applicants. These would generally include a range for acceptable SAT scores or high school grades, planned major in college, status such as first generation to go to college, intended major, race, gender and so forth. Then the software clusters all of these applicants into groups equal in total number to the number of projected admits. In doing so, the software groups applicants who share the same qualities together. Then the software selects one person from each group to be admitted, but this person is the applicant who is the least like others in his or her cluster. (Details are available on the company’s Web site.)

Gilbert said in an interview that this system offers key advantages. First, it removes bias from the equation, as an admissions officer can’t be accused of providing more or less emphasis to any criterion based on personal interests. Second, it assures that race and ethnicity are taken into account, but not given more weight than the Supreme Court would permit. “It does what we as human beings can’t do on a large scale,” he said.

Auburn will begin using the software for its admissions beginning next year. After that, the revolution of the machines. Bow to your MacBook!

Opponents of affirmative action are on the verge of almost fully defeating Leftist politicos in four states over ballot initiatives that, if passed, will outlaw preferential treatment based on race, sex and nationality in public university admissions and government hiring. Missouri, Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska are all in danger of losing their affirmative action programs come November 4, a day being called "Super Tuesday for Equal Rights" by some anti-affirmative action circles.

Liberal groups have been fighting tooth and nail through litigation to keep the issue away from voters, but so far the court battles have been all for naught in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska. Missouri, say enemies of preference programs, is proving to be a more difficult battleground, with the opposition there behaving "more aggressively."

Affirmative action supporters in the four states have a lot to worry about, as ballot initiatives intended to strike down preferential policy have proven in the past to be agreeable to voters from both the left and right.

In liberal Washington state, for example, the antipreference initiative was backed not only by 80% of Republicans and 62% of independents, but by 41% of Democrats; this in the face of liberal opposition that — abetted by such local corporate behemoths as Eddie Bauer, Microsoft and Starbucks — massively outspent supporters of the measure. The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative similarly passed despite the fierce opposition of a liberal-left coalition of 180 groups, ranging from the League of Women Voters and the United Auto Workers to the Arab-American Institute.

Come November, five states might be voting on something that's can be more divisive than presidential politics: affirmative action. Ballot initiatives to eliminate affirmative action in government funded schools and projects have been proposed in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. These are all states that will probably go to John McCain in the fall.

Using that logic, minorities in those states should prepare to kiss affirmative action goodbye, too. [CNN]

When UC Berkeley implemented race-blind admissions in 1997 it was one of the only major public schools in the country doing it, now, with the help of anti-affirmative action activist Ward Connerly, the movement has swept the nation. And guess who's hurting because of it? Both UC Berkeley and UCLA have had trouble recruiting black students in the past 10 years, and the University of Michigan is stuck between a mandated scaling back of race-based admissions and trying to promote diversity.

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