National Association of Scholars
1 Airport Place, Suite 7 • Princeton, NJ 08540-1532
phone: 609-683-7878 • fax: 609-683-0316
web: www.nas.org • email: nasonweb@nas.org
Press Release
November 7, 2008
Contact: Stephen H. Balch, President
(609) 683-7878
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRINCETON, NJ—The National Association of Scholars congratulated its affiliates in Nebraska and Colorado for the roles they played in supporting state voter initiatives to end ethnic- and gender-based preferences. The Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative, of which the Nebraska Association of Scholars was a formal sponsor, passed handily with almost 58% of the vote. The Colorado initiative, endorsed by the Colorado Association of Scholars, was very narrowly defeated with 49.4% of the vote.
“These initiatives”, declared NAS President Steve Balch, “affirm what should be a central principle in academic and American life: the treatment of each individual as an individual and not as the member of an identity group. We regret the narrow loss of the Colorado initiative, dragged down by a torrent of negative voting on Colorado ballot propositions, but have no doubt that preferences will ultimately be rejected nationwide. Civil rights initiatives have now won in four out of five instances in which they’ve gone before the voters, by any political standard an enviable record. We are confident that as America’s people continue to have the opportunity to make voting choices about equal rights for all, they will choose wisely.”
The National Association of Scholars is America’s foremost higher education reform group. Located in Princeton, NJ, it has forty-six state affiliates and more than four thousand professors, graduate students, administrators, and trustees as members.
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