Agustin,
Yeah, it’s no surprise to me that there are so many Chicana/o Studies, a few African American Studies and Women’s Studies professors on there. It bothers me, of course, but why should it really matter to this guy whether I do want to study something non-traditional. Who is he to judge?

Brenda,
I bet you could make some money too.

Kjerringa,
Free speech is definitely something that’s come up a lot in discussions about this. I never liked the guy and found lots of his columns offensive. It really turned me off how he could tell a whole group of people (Chicanos, Arabs, Asians) what he thought they should do and believe.

Geo,
I don’t doubt it.

Oso,
I’m a board member of the official organization. They’ve already put up a little statement affirming the university’s position and their own as non-partisan and definitely unaffiliated with this organization that claims ONE member. Technically, that would be Bruin Alumnus Assocation…

HP,
Dude, I know that. In fact I’ve seen you recommend Thernstrom’s and his wife’s recent book. You seem to do it every chance you get. A couple other people have already resigned from the board over this as well. You should look at their board of directors. I’m sure you’d see a lot of people you admire or agree with. Hell, you’d probably like the fact that this guy wants to get rid of ethnic studies, he doesn’t like feminists, he thinks anti-capitalists professors are radical, and he doesn’t seem to like social scientists in sociology, education and political science much. I know your feelings on that already, so he doesn’t seem too out of the “true conservatism” mainstream you say. Oh yeah, can you say anti-intellectual. Now, I know you’ve made me read something from a Townhall column before on that.

I don’t know anything about this Andrew Jones guy or his organization, but I did a quick search through your links and google and found this:

The group’s recent campaign has upset a number of targeted professors and triggered the resignation last weekend of Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, a prominent affirmative action opponent and former UCLA professor, from the advisory board for Jones’ organization.

Thernstrom said he joined the alumni group’s more than 20-member advisory board last year because he believed it “had a legitimate objective of combating the extraordinary politicization of the faculty on elite campuses today.”

Still, Thernstrom said, “I felt it was extremely unwise, one, to put out a list of targets of investigation and to agree to pay students to provide information about what was going on in the classroom of those students. That just seems to me way too intrusive. It seems to me a kind of vigilantism that I very much object to.”

Thernstrom is highly respected in conservative circles (he an his wife are the authors of this book on education, a book specifically dedicated to improving minority public education) and if he is resigning from the group, than I get the feeling that this group is a bunch of wackos and nuts and they don’t represent true conservativism.

But again, I say this knowing nothing more about the group than what you wrote above and the lil searching I did.

Okay, now back to my bachelors party preparation…:-)

peace.

As potential future UCLA people (we have a couple of applications floating around the campus), we were a bit disturbed by the news, though. It reminds me of the East German Stasi, but with corporate money rather than the government running the affair.