Rafael Perez-Torres
        English/Chicano Studies

Petitions and radical causes are a way of life at UCLA, and Professor Rafael Perez-Torres, being a go-along-to-get-along sort of fellow, certainly doesn’t fall short in that regard.  The signatory on no less than four extreme-left petitions (two with BAMN, one with Professors of Conscience, and one in favor of University of California divestment from Israel), Perez-Torres started his academic career at the University of Wisconsin, and while with the University of Pennsylvania, actually resided in the relatively mainstream field of contemporary American literature.  But by the time Hurricane Perez-Torres made landfall in California at UCSB, his specialty had grown to include a specialization in Chicano Studies – accompanied by a change to the more militant politics that Chicano Studies seems to demand.

Following a four-year stint at UCSB, Perez-Torres was hired as an associate professor by UCLA in 1998.  The new tenure-track position was a gold-plated opportunity to raise political hell, and Perez-Torres wasted no time in doing so.  That year saw the first incoming class of freshman who had been chosen without the magical aid of affirmative action.  Not surprisingly, with preferences removed, the incoming freshman class boasted 43% fewer minority members.  In response, the campus went into crisis mode, with students calling for the new Chancellor Albert Carnesale to defy the new state law.

Unfortunately for these activists, Carnesale refused to mount the ramparts with them, figuring that – get this! – he hadn’t left a primo administration job with Harvard to come break California law before he’d even finished fully unpacking.  However, Perez-Torres had no such compunctions about abusing his position.  As multiple articles from 1998 reveal, Perez-Torres was none other than the instigator and coordinator of a UC-wide faculty walkout protest held two consecutive days from October 21^st-22^nd.  The professors’ goal was protesting the end of affirmative action.  Their method would be neglecting their job duties by either canceling classes or holding them outdoors, while changing the lecture subject for those two days to the issue of affirmative action and diversity. 

In an attempt to justify this profoundly disrespectful abuse of students’ rights (you know, the right to receive the education they had paid for), Perez-Torres told the San Jose Mercury News on October 20, 1998 that the drop in minority admissions “is seriously affecting the quality of education that we as professors can offer.  It diminishes the variety of experiences that students can bring to the classroom.”  Of course, it requires an entirely separate, not to mention paternalistically racist, outlook to believe that every black person has had a different life experience from that of every white person.  But if you want to be a true Diversitista, you’ll have to quaff the radical ideological Kool-Aid hand-in-hand with Perez-Torres. 

However, if you understand that white and Asian applicants can be poor, can come from a bad home, can receive inadequate schooling, can need to take jobs to support their family, well then, you’ve just seen why Perez-Torres’ argument won’t hold up.  Unless Perez-Torres has been hiding something from us.  Maybe these “variety of experiences” are little more than what it feels like to grow up with dark skin, with curly hair, or full lips.  It’s a mystery, really, the exact nature of this secret, invaluable characteristic possessed exclusively by Hispanic or black UC applicants, such that we should continue to offer them a preferential admissions regime.  We know if Perez-Torres’ justification is poverty, poor education, family strife, and the like, the argument fails on its face.  But if it’s unique physiognomic features, well, you can’t really admit that.  It sounds absurd (as it should) to argue that differing hair texture or lip size comprise a “variety of experiences.”  Better just to clam up and keep mouthing platitudes, as Perez-Torres did two days later to the same paper, complaining, “We can’t train students if leadership isn’t drawn from diverse groups.  And diversity is very much a concern at UC.”  But only because Perez-Torres and his ilk insist it should be.

Perez-Torres’ other political commitments have demonstrated the same witless character.  On July 17, 1998, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Perez-Torres’ startling dissatisfaction with what any embittered Proposition 209 opponent would seemingly be delighted to see: the end of a rare but highly controversial practice of ‘fat cat’ admissions.   On infrequent occasions, an otherwise underqualified UC applicant would be given a second look on the urging of a top UC official, whether a Regent, campus president, or similarly powerful figure.  While an extremely rare practice (estimates had it at around a dozen students receiving such treatment per year), it was nonetheless an embarrassing chink in the armor of those who opposed racial preferences.  UC Regent Ward Connerly, staying true to his commitment against preferences of any kind, led the successful 1998 vote to end the practice.

While Connerly was universally despised by the Diversitistas who wanted to restore affirmative action, it seemed impossible to take issue with Connerly’s action.  After all, it was precisely this sort of underhanded old boys’ club chicanery that was such an effective rebuttal to conservatives’ devotion to equality in admissions.

But Perez-Torres was far from satisfied.  During the public comment period which preceded the vote, he blared, “Compare this to just the drop-off in freshman acceptances from underrepresented minority groups between last year and this: nearly 700 students.  This issue before the board today is a trifling one.” 

 It seemed that there was simply no pleasing Perez-Torres.  Well, other than one:  bring back all preferences, fat-cat, racial, and any other.  Put them all back on the table.  Because as Perez-Torres admits himself, fat cat admissions were a mere dripping faucet of preferences compared to the fire hose of affirmative action.  The lowest common denominator, so it seems, is a comfortable home for race-obsessed academics like Perez-Torres.