Right Web

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Overview

The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), founded in 1995, is a think tank "devoted exclusively to the promotion of colorblind equal opportunity and racial harmony." Established by Linda Chavez, the center says it is "uniquely positioned to counter the divisive impact of race conscious public policies." CEO focuses on three areas in particular: racial preferences, immigration and assimilation, and multicultural education.

CEO states that it "supports colorblind public policies and seeks to block the expansion of racial preferences and to prevent their use in employment, education, and voting." Concerning immigration, CEO believes that "with the United States admitting high numbers of immigrants, America's ability to accept newcomers will increasingly depend upon finding a pro-assimilation middle-ground between nativists who say that today's immigrants cannot assimilate and multiculturalists who say that they should not." As part of its concern about immigration, CEO "promotes the assimilation of immigrants into our society and research on their economic and social impact on the United States." The Center for Equal Opportunity opposes bilingual education, arguing that "multiculturalists have a firm grip on both elementary and secondary schools and the universities. Their ideology of racial and ethnic difference risks Balkanizing our multiracial society. Students who don't speak English are locked away in special programs that try to maintain native languages rather than teach English, often without their parents' consent. In many urban schools, African American students are fed a racialist 'Afrocentric' curriculum of dubious merit." (1)

Among the members of CEO's board of directors are Abigail Thernstrom and Roy Unz. Unz was the author of the anti-bilingual Proposition 227 in California. (2) CEO's staff is largely a family affair, with Linda Chavez serving as president, her son David Gersten serving as executive director, and another son, Rudy Gersten, working as director of operations. Roger Clegg, vice president and chief counsel of CEO, served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush senior administrations. Edward Blum, who was the director of legal affairs at the Sacramento-based American Civil Rights Institute and chair of the Houston-based Campaign for a Color-Blind America, is a senior fellow at CEO. (3)

An affiliated organization dedicated to reforming bilingual education and promoting English immersion is the Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development (READ), which was founded in 1989. On the CEO website, READ Institute is variously described as being a project of both the CEO and the Equal Opportunity Foundation. READ "supports the research and publication of new studies on effective English-language learning programs, produces policy reports and briefs, and publishes an annual scholarly journal called READ Perspectives." (4)

READ has a board of academic advisers whose members are Ralph Beals, Amherst College; Kevin Clark, Clark Consulting Group; Robert Rossier, educational consultant; Carol Whitten, former director of the Office for Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs; and Jim Littlejohn, former program director of the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. Chavez serves as president of the READ Institute, and Rosalie Pedalino Porter is editor of READ Perspectives.

Origins and Impact

Linda Chavez founded the Center for Equal Opportunity in early 1995 as a think tank "devoted exclusively to issues of race, ethnicity, language, and assimilation." While working as an associate of the neoconservative Manhattan Institute, Chavez started exploring her vision of establishing such a think tank since there was "nothing like it on the Right." Encouraged by the late William Simon, chairman of the John Olin Foundation and foundation executive director Jim Pierson to "strike out on my own," Chavez opened CEO in January 1995 with a founding grant from the Olin Foundation. According to CEO, the institute is "has become the premier voice opposing racial preferences, misguided bilingual education programs and other public policies that divide Americans by race, sex or national origin."

Two of the early products of the Center for Equal Opportunity were its books: ABCs of English Immersion: A Teachers' Guide, and Parents' Guide to Bilingual Education. The books instruct teachers and parents how to oppose bilingual education programs and "how to set up an alternative program using English as the language of instruction for immigrant and non-English speaking kids." (5)

Working closely with the local chapters of the National Association of Scholars, CEO has monitored the affirmative action admission policies of colleges and universities. CEO regularly files letters of complaint and legal briefs to end "race conscious public policies."

According to the READ Institute, it has produced the first comprehensive report on the actual costs of educating America's growing number of limited-English students. "In estimating their costs in light of new census data, school districts in Arizona and around the country will now have a reliable estimate of how much it costs to educate limited-English children," said Linda Chavez, President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, the parent organization for READ. Dr. Rosalie Porter, one of the authors of the report, wrote, "In the schools with English Immersion programs, 100% of the students took the statewide tests each year. The longer the English Immersion program was in place, the higher the achievement scores of students on the reading, language and math tests in English." (4)

The address of the Center for Equal Opportunity is also the address of LindaChavez.org, which has a website by the same name that archives her weekly columns.

Chavez, who does not speak Spanish, has long been a vigorous opponent of bilingual education and affirmative action programs. In her book An Unlikely Conservative, Chavez explained her interest in combating affirmative action and bilingual education. Explaining why she chose to accept the invitation to become president of U.S. English, an "English only" organization founded in 1983 by anti-immigration activist John Tanton, Chavez wrote: "I was very concerned about the semi-official status Spanish was acquiring in many parts of the country." She served as president of U.S. English, which was founded to establish English as the official and only language of government, for fourteen months in 1987-88 until the Arizona Republic published a memo written by Tanton that was blatantly anti-Latino. At the same time that Chavez resigned from U.S. English, so did Tanton and organization cofounder Gerda Bitrales. (6)

Among the right-wing institutes of related interest that CEO recommends are the Pioneer Institute, American Enterprise Institute, CATO Institute, Mountain States Legal Foundation, Pacific Legal Foundation, Federalist Society, Heritage Foundation, and Manhattan Institute. (1)

Funding

CEO, READ Institute, and the related Equal Opportunity Foundation are funded largely by right-wing foundations such as the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Bradley Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, and Smith Richardson Foundation. (2) CEO also petitions individuals to "Help Linda Chavez Unite Americans." Its online donation form makes this appeal: To achieve CEO's vision and restore our American creed, we must have the financial resources to fight an entrenched lobby and government bureaucracy dedicated to dividing Americans by race, sex and ethnicity."