Guest Editorial
BY JENNIFER GRATZ | OCTOBER 20, 2010
Yes on 107: Ending “Affirmative Action” guarantees fair treatment for all
Over ten years ago I filed a lawsuit against the University of Michigan for racial discrimination because their admissions policy gave an unfair twenty percent boost to black and Hispanic applicants. I know firsthand how horrible it is to be discriminated against when “affirmative action” and “diversity quota” policies employ different admissions standards based on race. Although I personally won my lawsuit after it was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, many universities and government agencies all over the country - including in Arizona – continue their policies that grant preferential treatment based on race to some, while discriminating against others. Keep Reading...
Guest Editorial
BY HAL LEWIS | OCTOBER 20, 2010
Why I resigned from American Physical Society
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University,
President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society 67 years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence --- it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as 35 years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social-scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be? Keep Reading...
