THE 1969 GUNFIGHT AT UCLA: Fifty years ago today, rival gangs, made up in part of “High Potential Program” students, fought it out on campus, leaving two dead.

The tiny “High Potential Program” was UCLA’s early, experimental form of affirmative action. Unlike today’s affirmative action programs, which primarily benefit middle- and upper-middle-class students, this was a real effort to benefit young people born on the wrong side of the tracks. As one might expect, UCLA relaxed the academic qualifications for this project. One of the founders of the program put it this way:   “A high school diploma was not a requisite. We recruited people who were active in their community and who had the ability to lead.”

Here’s the crazy part: In practice, the leadership requirement meant that UCLA wanted—and actively recruited–leaders of street gangs, especially those involved in black nationalism. A history of violence was no barrier to admission.

Not a lot of learning went on in the special classes conducted for the program. Linda Chavez, a UCLA grad student at the time, wrote about her experiences in teaching classes for Chicano High Potential students in An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal. I won’t spoil her story here. Suffice it to say it wasn’t pretty.

Among the students recruited for the program was Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter. Carter was the former leader of the Slauson gang, a mega-gang in South Central Los Angeles, and was known as “Mayor of the Ghetto.” Shortly before registering at UCLA he had spent four years in Soledad prison for armed robbery, where he had become a disciple of Malcolm X. In 1967, after meeting Black Panther Minister of Defense Huey Newton, he formed the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party, mostly out of members of the Slauson gang.

John Jerome Huggins was Carter’s right-hand man; it was only natural that they would attend UCLA together. Huggins’ apartment was a meeting place for Black Panthers. A cache of weapons, including rifles, shotguns, handguns and homemade bombs, was kept there.

Carter and Huggins never made it thorough their freshman year. They were gunned down in UCLA’s Campbell Hall in the course of a feud between the Panthers and a rival Black Nationalist group, the US Organization (also known as United Slaves), several of whose members were also UCLA High Potential Program students. These broad daylight murders sent shock waves through colleges and universities across the country.

The US Organization bore some similarity to the Black Panthers in that its membership was derived in large part from ordinary L.A. street gangs of the early 1960s. And like the Panthers, its veneer of Black Nationalism was thin. But the two groups despised each other (as rival gangs tend to do).

UCLA administrators never understood what hit them. They thought they were introducing young street toughs to a whole new world. And, of course, they were right. But the reverse was also true. Just as UCLA wanted to turn gang members into college students, gang members wanted to turn UCLA into a part of their protection racket.

Shortly before the gun battle, student activists pressured UCLA Chancellor Charles Young to create a Center for African American Studies—complete with an executive director and staff, office space and a generous budget. The Panthers and US were simply vying to control those resources, knowing that whoever controlled the executive director’s position would control the center. The Panthers backed one candidate for director and US another. The situation got out of hand. Two brothers, George and Larry Stiner, members of US, were convicted of murder.

The High Potential Program experiment was quietly terminated (though it is still celebrated in some quarters). After that, affirmative action programs took more conventional forms.

MONEY CAN’T BUY EVERYTHING:  The National Science Foundation pours money into university programs intended to increase the number of minority STEM majors. But the best advice to minority students interested in STEM continues to be free: “Want to Be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg Up May Hurt Your Chances.”

CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST RICHARD COHEN, THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER’S PRESIDENT:  It seeks damages and an injunction prohibiting him from repeating the false accusation that the Center is a “hate group.”

THE SUPREME COURT CAN’T DECIDE WHETHER TO DECIDE: Powerline reports that three petitions are pending before the Supreme Court on issues of whether the law covers various LGBT-related issues, but the Court keeps putting off deciding whether to take the cases. Does this signal something about Kavanaugh’s and/or Roberts’ willingness to take on controversial issues? Or are those who think so reading too much into the tealeaves?

The other LGBT-related issue that has thus far escaped the Supreme Court’s decision is whether Title IX requires schools to assign transgender students to the bathrooms, locker rooms, showers and athletic teams that they psychologically identify with. When Attorney General Sessions withdrew the Obama-Era guidance that said it does, the issue suddenly became less pressing. But that doesn’t mean the issue was resolved. The argument remains, and there are still private lawsuits and potential lawsuits out there. Pete Kirsanow and I argued that Title IX does not so require here.

THIRTY YEARS AGO:  Reagan’s Farewell Address warned us not to lose our sense of “informed patriotism.”

TWITTER TWITS:  A former Portland mayoral candidate condemned the Portland police via Twitter for shooting a paranoid schizophrenic home invader who was pulling a knife on an officer.  It’s not clear what she thought the alternative was.  She recommended that we “stop funding this deadly paramilitary force and start funding things that actually keep the people of Portland safe.”  When conservative talk-radio host Lars Larson pointed out the facts of the case, the twits at Twitter banned him for 12 hours.

NO, THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT RUTH BADER GINSBURG; IT’S ONE OF MY HISTORICAL POSTS:

On this day in history, 90-year-old Oliver Wendell Holmes retired from the Supreme Court after nearly 30 years of service. It was time, even a bit past time.  He’d been falling asleep during oral arguments and getting confused. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes had the unenviable task of having to tell him that.

Holmes biographer G. Edward White told the story this way:

Given Holmes’s extraordinary longevity and great fame, in addition to his remarkable intellectual powers, the discussion of retirement with him was a particularly delicate matter. After consulting with Louis Brandeis, however, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes decided to bring up the issue with Holmes. He made an appointment to meet with him on Sunday morning, January 12, 1932. In a brief conversation, Hughes suggested to Holmes that work was becoming too physically demanding for him and told him that his colleagues were concerned about his health. Holmes understood that Hughes was proposing that he retire, and wrote his resignation letter on the spot. In it he said that “the condition of my health makes it a duty to break off connections that I cannot leave without deep regret.” According to Chapman Rose [Holmes’ last law clerk], Hughes left the house “with tears streaming down his face.” Holmes, however, was “then and thereafter totally stoic” about his resignation, according to Rose, showing “no expression of emotion one way or another.” “The time has come,” he wrote in his resignation letter, “and I bow to the inevitable.”

Holmes lived another few years. He remains the oldest person to have served on the Supreme Court. He died on March 6, 1935, just a few days short of his 94^th birthday. In his will, he left his residuary estate to the United States government, including his blood-stained Civil War uniform, torn by shot.

Not every Justice of the Supreme Court has been as stoic or as cooperative as Holmes was about being asked to retire. Early in his Supreme Court career, Justice Stephen Field was among those called upon by his colleagues to persuade Justice Robert Grier to retire. Grier, who had suffered several strokes, complied. Decades later, it was Field who had become intermittently senile. The first Justice John Marshall Harlan was given the task of persuading him to resign. Harlan began by reminding Field about his earlier mission to Grier. Field snapped back, “Yes and a dirtier day’s work I never did in my life!”  Field refused to budge.

ON THE RIGHT TRACK?: This WAPO report makes it sound like the Trump Administration may be gearing up to do something like what I recommended last year at the Federalist Society’s Executive Branch Review conference (though WAPO tries to make it sound like a bad thing). I hope the report is true. Disparate impact liability has been a disaster for oh so many reasons.

ROBBING BEYONCÉ BLIND: Mark Pulliam discusses how litigation under the Americans with Disabilities Act continues to run amok.

PIE AIN’T SQUARE, CORNBREAD ARE SQUARE: Pie are round.

IF BEING ANTI-COMMUNISM IS A HATE CRIME:  Then I guess I’m guilty.

HAROLD DEMSETZ, RIP:  Jonathan Adler discusses this important property rights theorist.

ABIGAIL SHRIER:  “When Your Daughter Defies Biology:  The Burden of Mothers Whose Children Suffer from ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.'”

No paywall here.

At some point, a lot of doctors are going to get sued.

MAYBE IT’S TIME FOR AN INSURRECTION:  Portland State Professor Who Exposed “Grievance Studies” Corruption Faces University Discipline.

JOHN FUND:  “Trump Veers Off Message on the Border Wall.”

PAUL MIRENGOFF: “Chai Feldblum Is Finally Out at the EEOC.”

I know Chai Feldblum a bit. She is a nice, upbeat woman who has kindly agreed to debate conservatives at Federalist Society events on a number of occasions. For that, I thank her. It isn’t easy to get Progressives to debate race and sex issues at Federalist Society events.

Nevertheless, I agree with Paul that her parting shot on twitter illustrates why Sen. Lee, Sen. Lankford and others were right to oppose her reappointment. She wrote:

Today at noon my commission on the EEOC expires. What a wonderful almost nine-year run I have had! TY to all who worked so hard on my confirmation. We certainly gave it our best shot. Now we must fight even harder for diversity, safety, and equity. There is no other way!

Her job at the EEOC was not to fight for diversity, safety, and equity. It was to enforce the law as written—a task she and her Progressive colleagues strayed from too often. Alas, the EEOC has become renowned for exceeding the law as written. Here, for example, is an amicus brief that discusses the EEOC’s wrongheaded policy on hiring job applicants with criminal records.

It is also worth pointing out that the Trump Administration’s efforts to appoint a non-lawyer to the EEOC position was a mistake. Chai Feldblum would have run circles around a non-lawyer, even a very smart one. The position calls for someone who knows the law in that area. I nominate Paul Mirengoff.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: My 2006 article exposing Elizabeth Warren’s bogus research on bankruptcy made SSRN’s Top Ten for last week.

FORD’S BETTER IDEA: On this day in 1914, Henry Ford announced that the Ford Motor Company would essentially double wages to $5 a day.

Worker turnover had been high at Ford; in 1913 it had hired 52,000 men for 14,000 jobs. The $5 wage was intended to sharply reduce turnover and the delays, training costs, and employee errors that stemmed from high turnover.  The plan worked (at least at first). Once an employee got a $5 job at Ford, he was unlikely to want to let it go.

But the raise came with a number of strings. Workers had to abstain from alcohol, not physically abuse their families, keep their homes clean, and save part of their paychecks. Ford believed that problems at home, including money problems, led to problems on the job and to absenteeism.

It is frequently said that Ford raised his workers’ pay in order to induce them to buy Ford automobiles and hence raise profits for the company. But Ford wasn’t that math-challenged. There is no way in heaven that 100% of that money would make it back to the company. That said, he probably did sell more cars to his workforce than he otherwise would have. And I am sure he wasn’t against that.

THAT’S DISGRACEFUL!: Attention Southern Californians: On Friday, January 11^th and Saturday, January 12^th, the National Association of Scholars is sponsoring a conference entitled “Disgrace: Shame, Punishment and Redemption in American Higher Education” at Chapman University in Orange, California. The theme of the conference is as follows:

At this conference, the National Association of Scholars intends to discuss “disgrace” in two ways: disgrace as a tactic of the progressive left, and the real disgrace that falls on colleges and universities that countenance such tactics. These tactics include attempting to destroy people through false accusation loudly repeated, and to shame people into resignation while using success at this to intimidate everyone else into silent, self-censoring conformity.

The Keynote Speaker will be by Heather Mac Donald. Other speakers include Peter Wood, Jay Nordlinger, John Tooby, Daniel Sznycer, Darel E. Paul, Edward Erwin, John Beahrs, James E. Enstrom, Christine Rosen, Keith Whitaker, Mark Bauerlein, Bruce Gilley, Rachel Fulton Brown, Matt Peterson, and Helen Andrews.

I hope to be there. (I’m on the NAS Board of Directors.)

You should come too if you can. You can register here.

“GRADING AIN’T JUST GRADING” SAYS AU: American University is sponsoring a seminar urging writing teachers emphasize antiracism when grading student writing, rather than actual writing skills. The seminar leader “will discuss the ways that White language supremacy is perpetuated in college classrooms despite the better intentions of faculty, particularly through the practices of grading writing.” The College Fix reports.

Somebody needs to point out to minority students at AU that the university doesn’t give a damn about improving their writing skills and that they would be better off taking their tuition dollars to a school that does.

ELIZABETH WARREN FOR PRESIDENT?: Yikes. This article exposing her bogus research on bankruptcy should have been enough to sink her political ambitions back in 2006. But it wasn’t.

I would say that she doesn’t have a chance. But I said that about Barack Obama and Donald Trump, so I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of American politics.

CHIUNE SUGIHARA SAVED THOUSANDS OF LIVES: Today is the 119^th anniversary of his birth.

WAPO TRUMPETS—“MSNBC IS SURGING”: That wouldn’t be surprising in our increasingly polarized time.   I’d be a little surprised if there weren’t at least a “surgelette.” But Exhibit 1 for the surge is this: During the week of Dec. 17, MSNBC beat Fox News for the first time in 17 years. The problem is that Sean Hannity was on vacation that week, and MSNBC beat Fox News only during the five-day work week. If all seven days of the week are considered, Fox News bested MSNBC. Consequently, I’m not sure this is quite as newsworthy as WAPO’s “media critic” thinks it is. His excitement may be another case of “Perceptions of Newsworthiness Are Contaminated by Political Usefulness Bias.”

IS WEST VIRGINIA UNCONSTITUTIONAL?: At the start of the Civil War, most of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s northwestern region were not keen on the Confederacy and wanted to remain with the Union. On this day in 1862, therefore, Abraham Lincoln signed into law an Act admitting West Virginia as our 35^th state, thus dividing Virginia in two.

But did the United States comply with all the Constitutional requirements for creating a new state out of an old one? The answer is arguably no. There is a Constitutional requirement that a state give its permission before a region can secede and became a separate state. In this case, permission came only from a rump government-in-exile session of the Virginia legislature consisting of members from the seceding region. Times being what they were Lincoln accepted it.  Still, as nice as it is to have West Virginia as a state (hey, 50 is a nice round number), we might not want to wave that around as a precedent.

Vasan Kesavan and Michael Stokes Paulsen discussed this burning Constitutional question at length a few years back.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I talk about this very precedent, in the context of splitting California, in my state secession paper, forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review.

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DeVOS IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK: I am so pleased that the U.S. Department of Education has withdrawn the Obama Administration’s controversial Dear Colleague Letter applying disparate impact analysis to school discipline. It is worth pointing out that I am not the only one who is pleased. As I detail in my article, there were a lot of teachers, across the country, upset over the Obama Administration’s policy. And then there is this polling data:

In 2015, Education Next-Program on Education Policy and Governance conducted a survey of teachers. The question on school discipline asked: “Do you support or oppose federal policies that prevent schools from expelling or suspending black and Hispanic students at higher rates than other students?”

A healthy majority of teachers—59%–reported that they opposed the policy. Only 23% supported it (with 18% answering that they neither support nor oppose). Interestingly, most of the teachers who opposed the policy were not the least wishy-washy in their opposition. Of the 59% who opposed the policy, 34% said that “completely oppose the policy” while only 25% “somewhat oppose.” Supporters on the other hand were more lukewarm. Of the 23%, 16% said they “somewhat support” the policy, while only 7% “completely support the policy.”

Members of the general public responded similarly. A majority (51%) opposed the policy, while only 21% supported (with the 29% answering that they neither support nor oppose). The same pattern of strong opposition and weak support emerged.

But even though rank and file teachers as well as local union leaders opposed the Obama Administration’s policy, the national teachers unions sided with the Obama Administration.   It is one more example of the huge distance between union members and their national leaders.