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Wikipedia

Ron Unz

May 05, 2023

Ronald Keeva Unz (/ʌnz/; born September 20, 1961) is an American technology entrepreneur, political activist, writer, and publisher. A former businessman, Unz became a multi-millionaire in Silicon Valley before entering politics.[1] He unsuccessfully ran for governor as a Republican in the 1994 California gubernatorial election and for U.S. Senator in 2016. He has sponsored multiple propositions promoting structured English immersion education as well as campaign finance reform and minimum wage increases.

Ron Unz
Unz at a 2013 New America symposium
Born
Ronald Keeva Unz

(1961-09-20) September 20, 1961 (age 61)
North Hollywood, California, United States
EducationHarvard University (BA)
University of Cambridge
Stanford University
Occupation(s)Businessman, political activist, writer
Political partyRepublican

He was publisher of The American Conservative from 2007 to 2013, and since 2013 has been publisher and editor of The Unz Review, a website which describes itself as presenting "controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American mainstream media."[2] The website has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League as hosting racist and antisemitic content,[3] and the Southern Poverty Law Center which has labeled it a white nationalist publication.[4] Unz has also drawn criticism for funding VDARE and other writers that critics have termed white supremacist.[5]

Early life and career

Ronald Keeva Unz was born in Los Angeles, California, on September 20, 1961,[6] to a Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant, and raised in a Yiddish-speaking household in North Hollywood.[7][8][1] His mother was an anti-war activist[8] who raised her son as a single mother. Unz has said that his childhood as a fatherless child in a single-parent household which was on the dole, was a source of "embarrassment and discomfort".[8]

He attended North Hollywood High School and, in his senior year won first place in the 1979 Westinghouse Science Talent Search.[7] He attended Harvard University, graduating in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and ancient history.[6][9] He then took graduate courses in physics at the University of Cambridge and began a Ph.D. at Stanford University before abandoning the program.[8][9]

Unz worked in the banking industry and wrote software for mortgage securities during his studies. In 1988 he founded the company Wall Street Analytics in New York City, moving it to Palo Alto, California, five years later.[8][9] In 2006 the company was acquired by the ratings firm Moody's.[10]

Political career

Unz made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in the 1994 California gubernatorial election, challenging incumbent Pete Wilson. He ran as a conservative alternative to the more moderate Wilson and was endorsed by the conservative California Republican Assembly.[11] He came in second place to Wilson, receiving 707,431 votes (34.3 percent).[12] Newspapers referred to Unz's candidacy as a Revenge of the Nerds and often quoted his claim of a 214 IQ.[13][11][1][9]

In 1998, Unz sponsored California Proposition 227, which aimed to change the state's bilingual education to an opt-in structured English-language educational system. It was approved by the voters[14] despite opposition from language education researchers.[15][self-published source?] Proposition 227 did not seek to end bilingual education since special exemptions were made for students to remain in an English immersion class if a parent so desires. However, there were limits (such as age restrictions) for the exemptions, and there were provisions to discipline teachers who refused to teach solely or predominantly in English.[16] Proposition 227 was approved in 1998, but repealed by Proposition 58 in 2016. In 2002, Unz backed a similar initiative, the Massachusetts English Language Education in Public Schools Initiative,[17] which was approved by 61.25% of the voters.[18] He also supported ballot initiatives in other states including Arizona Proposition 203, Colorado Amendment 31, and 2002 Massachusetts Question 2.[19][20]

In early 1999, Unz introduced a campaign-finance reform ballot initiative known as the California Voters Bill of Rights (Proposition 25).[21] Co-sponsored by California Democrat Tony Miller and endorsed by Senator John McCain,[22] the proposal would have required campaign contributions greater than $1,000 to be declared online within 24 hours, limited individual contributions to $5,000, banned corporate contributions to candidates, and permitted statewide candidates to raise funds only within the 12 months before an election.[23][24] In late 1999 Unz briefly entered the U.S. Senate race to challenge incumbent Dianne Feinstein,[25] declaring his candidacy in October[22] and dropping out by December to focus on fundraising for Proposition 25, which was ultimately defeated in the March 2000 primary election.[26][27]

In 2012 and 2014, Unz worked on a ballot initiative to raise the Californian minimum wage from $10 to $12, but his campaign failed.[28][29] His proposal was supported by economist James K. Galbraith.[28]

In 2016, Unz organized the "Free Harvard, Fair Harvard" campaign, a slate of five candidates campaigning for spots on the Harvard Board of Overseers, the governing board of Harvard University. The slate included himself, journalist Stuart Taylor Jr., physicist Stephen Hsu, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and lawyer Lee C. Cheng. The campaign sought for tuition fees at Harvard to be abolished and for greater transparency in the admissions process.[30][31][32] None of the five candidates were elected to the 30-person board.[33][34]

Unz campaigned on a Republican ticket in California in the 2016 primaries for election to the US Senate intending to succeed Democrat Barbara Boxer.[35] Having previously supported immigration, he now proposed it "should be sharply reduced, probably by 50% or more."[36] Though not hoping to win the nomination, he put himself forward in an attempt to challenge the then proposed repeal of Proposition 227.[35] He was endorsed by former U.S. Representative Ron Paul.[37] In the final result, he gained 64,698 votes (1.3%).[38]

Writing and publishing

An investor in The American Conservative, he was its publisher from 2007 to 2013.[39] He also contributed opinion articles on topics such as immigration, the minimum wage, and urban crime.[19] In an email leaked to National Review magazine, editor Daniel McCarthy wrote that Unz was acting as if he was the editor of The American Conservative and threatened to resign if the publication's board did not support him over Unz.[40]

In 2012 Unz published an article in The American Conservative entitled "The Myth of American Meritocracy". He argued Ivy League universities held an unspoken admissions quota for granting spots to Asian/Asian American applicants an Asian quota similar to earlier Jewish quotas, and that Jewish students are over-represented than merit would suggest, which he claimed was caused by unconscious Jewish bias among administrators.[41][42][43] The article said that the “massive apparent bias” could be attributed to Jewish administrators at those universities.[44][45] His argument for existence of Asian race-based quota was reproduced in a subsequent New York Times special debate feature, "Fears of an Asian Quota in the Ivy League".[46][47] Unz's admissions analysis was contested by academics at Yale, who showed that his data "grossly underestimates the proportion of Asian-Americans".[48] Unz's writings on Ivy League admissions were praised by David Duke who said it confirmed Harvard was "now under powerful Jewish influence". Antisemitic conspiracy theorist Kevin B. MacDonald said it was similar to his own view that Jews are "at odds with the values of the great majority of non-Jewish White Americans."[42][45]

Unz also compiled the Unz Archive (UNZ.org), a searchable online collection of periodicals, books, and video, that by 2012 held around 25,000 issues of over 120 publications, including The American Mercury, The Literary Digest, Inquiry, Collier's, Marxism Today, New Politics, and various pulp fiction and romance magazines.[49][50][51] Nick Gillespie of Reason called it "one of the Web's great archive projects".[50]

The Unz Review

In November 2013, Unz launched the website The Unz Review for which he serves as editor-in-chief and publisher.[42]

The Unz Review describes itself as presenting "controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American mainstream media."[2] Unz says he mostly posts articles that have already been published, and "I don't even read most of the articles I publish, and I certainly don't edit them. I'm busy."[45] It has been described by the Associated Press as "a hodgepodge of views from corners of both the left and right"[52] and by the New York Times as "far right".[53] According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2014, the webzine is an "outlet for certain writers to attack Israel and Jews".[42] The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it a white nationalist publication.[4] In 2016, a research fellow at the ADL said "I haven’t seen Ron Unz write anything anti-Semitic himself, but he really gives a platform to anti-Semites."[45] The ADL and others criticized Unz for a $600,000 grant for research in evolutionary biology to Gregory Cochran, a professor who argued that homosexuality may be caused by a "gay germ."[45] Ralph Nader, while running with Unz for Harvard board of overseers called him "a very nuanced guy. He should not be stereotyped as a lot of the world of identity politics does."[32]

The Unz Foundation, of which he is president, has donated to individuals and organizations which are alleged by the ADL to have published or expressed opinions that are antisemitic or, in the case of Norman Finkelstein, are anti-Israel. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, it gave Paul Craig Roberts $108,000, $74,000 to Philip Giraldi, $75,000 to Finkelstein, $80,000 to CounterPunch and $60,000 to Philip Weiss, co-editor of the Mondoweiss website.[42][54] In addition, the Unz Foundation has given grants to Alison Weir, founder of If Americans Knew.[42] He has donated tens of thousands of dollars to VDARE, which he admits is a "quasi-white nationalist" website, but has said "they write interesting things".[55][5][56]

In 2017, The Unz Review received public attention when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was criticized after tweeting an article by a columnist, counter-terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi, titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars" published in the webzine.[57][58]

Since their 2014 article, the ADL commented in October 2018 that Unz "has embraced hardcore anti-Semitism", "denied the Holocaust", and "endorsed the claim that Jews consume the blood of non-Jews", referring to blood libel.[3] In July 2018, in articles for The Unz Review, he wrote about the claims in the Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's The International Jew. Ford's work, a series of antisemitic pamphlets published in the 1920s, appeared to Unz to be "quite plausible and factually-oriented, even sometimes overly cautious in their presentation."[3] He partly accepted the standard consensus on the Protocols but believes they were assembled by "someone who was generally familiar with the secretive machinations of elite international Jews against the existing governments... who drafted the document to outline his view of their strategic plans."[3]

In August 2018, Unz made use of Holocaust denial arguments and wrote, "I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so."[3] That same year, The Unz Review published material written by Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett,[59][39][60][61] while Unz himself defended David Irving, who lost his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt. Unz also implied that Mossad was involved in the murders of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.[39] Writing about the 2001 September 11 attacks in a September 2018 article for his Review, Unz stated: "the vast weight of the evidence clearly points in a single direction, implicating Israel and its Mossad intelligence service, with the case being overwhelmingly strong in motive, means, and opportunity.”[62]

In 2016, Unz self-published The Myth of American Meritocracy and Other Essays, a hardcover collection of most of his writings, including nearly all of his print articles.[56]

References

  1. ^ a b c Hornblower, Margot (June 8, 1998). "The Man Behind Prop. 227". CNN. from the original on July 10, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Indiana U says it can't fire prof who made 'racist, sexist and homophobic' remarks". CBC Radio. November 25, 2019. from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e "California Entrepreneur Ron Unz Launches a Series of Rhetorical Attacks on Jews". Anti-Defamation League. October 4, 2018. from the original on June 12, 2019. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  4. ^ a b Gais, Hannah (January 19, 2021). "Meet the White Nationalist Organizer Who Spewed Hate Against Lawmakers". Southern Poverty Law Center. from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  5. ^ a b Krantz, Laura (April 16, 2016). "Harvard critic faces scrutiny on donations". Boston Globe. from the original on November 30, 2018. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  6. ^ a b Willis, Doug (May 1, 1994). "Ron Unz - Science prodigy turns into candidate". The Press-Enterprise. Riverside, CA. Associated Press. p. A16 – via NewsBank.
  7. ^ a b Foster, Douglas (November 24, 1999). "Being Ron Unz". LA Weekly. from the original on June 22, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
  8. ^ a b c d e Miller, Matthew (July 19, 1999). "Man With a Mission: Ron Unz's Improbable Assault on the Powers That Be in California". The New Republic. Vol. 221. pp. 24–29. ISSN 0028-6583 – via NewsBank.
  9. ^ a b c d Bruni, Frank (June 14, 1998). "The California Entrepreneur who Beat Bilingual Teaching". The New York Times. from the original on October 22, 2016. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  10. ^ . MWSA News. Moody's Corporation. December 18, 2006. Archived from the original on October 28, 2007. Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  11. ^ a b Wallace, Amy (May 8, 1994). "Unlikely Path Led to Wilson Foe's Far-Right Challenge – Politics: A computer 'genius' with a passion for Greek philosophy, Ron Unz has set out to jolt the GOP". The Los Angeles Times. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  12. ^ . California Secretary of State. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008.
  13. ^ Reeves, Phil (May 17, 1994). "'Nerds' seek revenge in Californian poll: Apathy marks the run up to the contest for governor". The Independent. from the original on June 9, 2015. Retrieved December 24, 2020.
  14. ^ Arguments in favor December 24, 2008, at the Wayback Machine of 1998 California Ballot Proposition 227
  15. ^ . February 9, 1998. Archived from the original on March 20, 2006.
  16. ^ Crawford, James (2000). At War with Diversity. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. ISBN 1-85359-505-5.
  17. ^ Tench, Megan (November 3, 2002). "Heated battle over English immersion intensifies". Boston Globe. p. B.6. Retrieved March 10, 2018 – via pqarchiver.com.
  18. ^ Galvin, William Francis. "Statewide Ballot Questions — Statistics by Year: 1919 - 2018". sec.state.ma.us. Archived from the original on April 9, 2021.
  19. ^ a b Medina, Jennifer (November 26, 2013). "Conservative Leads Effort to Raise Minimum Wage in California". The New York Times. from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  20. ^ Haver, Johanna J. (2013). English for the Children: Mandated by the People, Skewed by Politicians and Special Interests. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Education. ISBN 9781475802023.
  21. ^ Streisand, Betsy (April 26, 1999). "A one-man band's new song". U.S. News & World Report. Vol. 126, no. 16. p. 42.
  22. ^ a b York, Anthony (October 5, 1999). "Feinstein gets a challenger". Salon.com. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  23. ^ Wood, Daniel B. (April 6, 1999). "Pruning California's political money tree". The Christian Science Monitor. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  24. ^ Purdum, Todd S. (March 25, 1999). "California Republican Tries Altering Campaign Finance". The New York Times. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  25. ^ "Millionaire GOP-er backs wage boost". Politico. Associated Press. January 11, 2014. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  26. ^ Gledhill, Lynda (December 1, 1999). "Unz Bows Out of U.S. Senate Race". The San Francisco Chronicle. p. A3 – via NewsBank.
  27. ^ Wood, Daniel B. (March 9, 2000). "With initiatives, California tilts conservative". The Christian Science Monitor. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  28. ^ a b Patterson, Robert. "The Missing Plank of the GOP Platform". The Natural Family. from the original on June 16, 2018. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  29. ^ Abramsky, Sasha (April 8, 2014). "What If the Minimum Wage Were $15 an Hour?". The Nation. from the original on May 29, 2018. Retrieved May 29, 2018.
  30. ^ Saul, Stephanie (January 14, 2016). "How Some Would Level the Playing Field: Free Harvard Degrees". The New York Times. from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved February 18, 2017.
  31. ^ Adamczyk, Alicia (January 15, 2016). "Group Says Harvard Tuition Should Be Free for All Students". Money. from the original on August 12, 2020.
  32. ^ a b Gerstein, Josh (May 19, 2016). "Ralph Nader declares war on Harvard". Politico. from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  33. ^ DeCosta-Klipa, Nik (May 23, 2016). "Ralph Nader fails in bid to be elected to Harvard board". Boston.com. from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  34. ^ Gerstein, Josh (May 23, 2016). "Nader bid for Harvard board comes up short". Politico. from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  35. ^ a b Wildermuth, John (April 17, 2016). "Ron Unz's U.S. Senate race raises concerns of splintered GOP vote". San Francisco Chronicle. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  36. ^ Krikorian, Mark (May 27, 2016). "Ron Unz, Immigration Convert". National Review. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  37. ^ Cadelago, Christopher. "Ron Paul endorses Ron Unz for California's U.S. Senate seat". The Sacramento Bee. from the original on September 7, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  38. ^ "California Primary Results, June 7". The New York Times. September 29, 2016. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  39. ^ a b c Sixsmith, Ben (September 15, 2018). "The curious case of Ron Unz". The Spectator. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019. In June, Unz published an essay saluting the 'remarkable' historiography of David Irving. In his legal fight against the historian Deborah Lipstadt, Unz wrote, Irving's work was analysed 'line-by-line, footnote-by-footnote' by historians who 'came up empty'. Readers of expert witness Richard J. Evans's report on Irving's scholarship will know this to be false. Unz followed this essay with an approving appraisal of the Nazis' treatment of France that never once mentioned their millions of murders in Central and Eastern Europe, long articles implicating Mossad in the killings of John and Robert Kennedy and a series of analyses of Jewish history which concluded that Judaism entails 'the enslavement or execution of all non-Jews', that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is 'a classic of political thought', that the Holocaust almost certainly did not take place in a recognisable form and that anti-Semitism has in general been well-founded.
  40. ^ Woodruff, Betsy (August 1, 2013). "The American Conservative, Unfused?". The National Review. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  41. ^ Scheer, Jacob (August 1, 2018). "The American Jewish Affirmative Action About-Face". Tablet. from the original on August 9, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  42. ^ a b c d e f "Ron Unz: Controversial Writer and Funder of Anti-israel Activists". Anti-Defamation League. January 20, 2014. from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
  43. ^ Pinker, Steven (September 4, 2014). "The Trouble With Harvard". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. from the original on February 27, 2018.
  44. ^ Ingall, Marjorie (February 2, 2018). "Alt-Right Publication Accuses Jews of Attempting to Indoctrinate America's Young Via Subversive Children's Books". Tablet Magazine. Archived from the original on November 23, 2020. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  45. ^ a b c d e Wilson, Phil (April 25, 2016). "Controversial English-only crusader sets his sights on California's Senate race". Los Angeles Times. from the original on January 16, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  46. ^ Lubin, Gus. "It's Pretty Clear That The Ivy League Discriminates Against Asians". Business Insider. from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  47. ^ Friedersdorf, Conor (December 21, 2012). "Is the Ivy League Fair to Asian Americans?". The Atlantic. from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  48. ^ "UP CLOSE: What's next for affirmative action?". Yale Daily News. September 22, 2014. from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  49. ^ Bates, Stephen (Spring 2012). "The Periodical Table" (PDF). The Wilson Quarterly. 36 (2): 15. (PDF) from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  50. ^ a b Gillespie, Nick (October 3, 2012). "Why The Internet is Great or, "The Influence of Encounter" and UNZ.org". Reason.com. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  51. ^ Wood, Mike (April 18, 2012). "Learning about our tradition". Solidarity. No. 242. p. 10.
  52. ^ Oxford, Andrew (September 21, 2017). "Ex-CIA agent sparks Twitter controversy by sharing commentary on Jews". AP News. Associated Press. from the original on March 14, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  53. ^ "Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk (and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed)". The New York Times. October 17, 2018. from the original on October 17, 2018. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  54. ^ Elder of Ziyon (December 12, 2013). "New York Times, Others Praised Anti-Semitic and Slanderous Article". The Algemeiner. from the original on April 21, 2019. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  55. ^ Duehren, Andrew M; Thompson, Daphne C (April 16, 2016). "Overseers Candidate Donates to 'Quasi-White Nationalist' Group". The Harvard Crimson. from the original on April 19, 2019. Retrieved April 19, 2019.
  56. ^ a b Rosenberg, John S. (April 26, 2016). "The Quiet Campaign". Harvard Magazine. from the original on November 28, 2020. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
  57. ^ Tatum, Sophie (September 22, 2017). "Ex-CIA operative apologizes for tweet". CNN. from the original on November 30, 2018. Retrieved November 30, 2018.
  58. ^ Kirchick, James (September 25, 2017). "Valerie Plame's Real Blunder". Tablet. from the original on May 31, 2019. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  59. ^ Ross, Alexander Reid (March 14, 2019). "World News". Haaretz.com. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  60. ^ "Following Sacha Baron Cohen's speech, here is ADL's short list of social media accounts that should have been removed long ago". Anti-Defamation League. November 25, 2019. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  61. ^ "Ron Unz - L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme". Conspiracy Watch | L'Observatoire du conspirationnisme (in French). November 8, 2021. from the original on November 10, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
  62. ^ "Antisemitic Conspiracies About 9/11 Endure 20 Years Later". Anti-Defamation League. September 9, 2021. from the original on June 13, 2022. Retrieved June 22, 2022.

Further reading

  • Crawford, James (1997). "The Campaign Against Proposition 227: A Post Mortem". Bilingual Research Journal. 21 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1080/15235882.1997.10815599.
  • William, Ryan (2002). "The Unz Initiatives and the Abolition of Bilingual Education". Boston College Law Review. 43 (2): 487–519.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ron Unz.

May 05, 2023
ronald, keeva, born, september, 1961, american, technology, entrepreneur, political, activist, writer, publisher, former, businessman, became, multi, millionaire, silicon, valley, before, entering, politics, unsuccessfully, governor, republican, 1994, californ. Ronald Keeva Unz ʌ n z born September 20 1961 is an American technology entrepreneur political activist writer and publisher A former businessman Unz became a multi millionaire in Silicon Valley before entering politics 1 He unsuccessfully ran for governor as a Republican in the 1994 California gubernatorial election and for U S Senator in 2016 He has sponsored multiple propositions promoting structured English immersion education as well as campaign finance reform and minimum wage increases Ron UnzUnz at a 2013 New America symposiumBornRonald Keeva Unz 1961 09 20 September 20 1961 age 61 North Hollywood California United StatesEducationHarvard University BA University of CambridgeStanford UniversityOccupation s Businessman political activist writerPolitical partyRepublicanHe was publisher of The American Conservative from 2007 to 2013 and since 2013 has been publisher and editor of The Unz Review a website which describes itself as presenting controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American mainstream media 2 The website has been criticized by the Anti Defamation League as hosting racist and antisemitic content 3 and the Southern Poverty Law Center which has labeled it a white nationalist publication 4 Unz has also drawn criticism for funding VDARE and other writers that critics have termed white supremacist 5 Contents 1 Early life and career 2 Political career 3 Writing and publishing 3 1 The Unz Review 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External linksEarly life and career EditRonald Keeva Unz was born in Los Angeles California on September 20 1961 6 to a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant and raised in a Yiddish speaking household in North Hollywood 7 8 1 His mother was an anti war activist 8 who raised her son as a single mother Unz has said that his childhood as a fatherless child in a single parent household which was on the dole was a source of embarrassment and discomfort 8 He attended North Hollywood High School and in his senior year won first place in the 1979 Westinghouse Science Talent Search 7 He attended Harvard University graduating in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and ancient history 6 9 He then took graduate courses in physics at the University of Cambridge and began a Ph D at Stanford University before abandoning the program 8 9 Unz worked in the banking industry and wrote software for mortgage securities during his studies In 1988 he founded the company Wall Street Analytics in New York City moving it to Palo Alto California five years later 8 9 In 2006 the company was acquired by the ratings firm Moody s 10 Political career EditUnz made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in the 1994 California gubernatorial election challenging incumbent Pete Wilson He ran as a conservative alternative to the more moderate Wilson and was endorsed by the conservative California Republican Assembly 11 He came in second place to Wilson receiving 707 431 votes 34 3 percent 12 Newspapers referred to Unz s candidacy as a Revenge of the Nerds and often quoted his claim of a 214 IQ 13 11 1 9 In 1998 Unz sponsored California Proposition 227 which aimed to change the state s bilingual education to an opt in structured English language educational system It was approved by the voters 14 despite opposition from language education researchers 15 self published source Proposition 227 did not seek to end bilingual education since special exemptions were made for students to remain in an English immersion class if a parent so desires However there were limits such as age restrictions for the exemptions and there were provisions to discipline teachers who refused to teach solely or predominantly in English 16 Proposition 227 was approved in 1998 but repealed by Proposition 58 in 2016 In 2002 Unz backed a similar initiative the Massachusetts English Language Education in Public Schools Initiative 17 which was approved by 61 25 of the voters 18 He also supported ballot initiatives in other states including Arizona Proposition 203 Colorado Amendment 31 and 2002 Massachusetts Question 2 19 20 In early 1999 Unz introduced a campaign finance reform ballot initiative known as the California Voters Bill of Rights Proposition 25 21 Co sponsored by California Democrat Tony Miller and endorsed by Senator John McCain 22 the proposal would have required campaign contributions greater than 1 000 to be declared online within 24 hours limited individual contributions to 5 000 banned corporate contributions to candidates and permitted statewide candidates to raise funds only within the 12 months before an election 23 24 In late 1999 Unz briefly entered the U S Senate race to challenge incumbent Dianne Feinstein 25 declaring his candidacy in October 22 and dropping out by December to focus on fundraising for Proposition 25 which was ultimately defeated in the March 2000 primary election 26 27 In 2012 and 2014 Unz worked on a ballot initiative to raise the Californian minimum wage from 10 to 12 but his campaign failed 28 29 His proposal was supported by economist James K Galbraith 28 In 2016 Unz organized the Free Harvard Fair Harvard campaign a slate of five candidates campaigning for spots on the Harvard Board of Overseers the governing board of Harvard University The slate included himself journalist Stuart Taylor Jr physicist Stephen Hsu consumer advocate Ralph Nader and lawyer Lee C Cheng The campaign sought for tuition fees at Harvard to be abolished and for greater transparency in the admissions process 30 31 32 None of the five candidates were elected to the 30 person board 33 34 Unz campaigned on a Republican ticket in California in the 2016 primaries for election to the US Senate intending to succeed Democrat Barbara Boxer 35 Having previously supported immigration he now proposed it should be sharply reduced probably by 50 or more 36 Though not hoping to win the nomination he put himself forward in an attempt to challenge the then proposed repeal of Proposition 227 35 He was endorsed by former U S Representative Ron Paul 37 In the final result he gained 64 698 votes 1 3 38 Writing and publishing EditAn investor in The American Conservative he was its publisher from 2007 to 2013 39 He also contributed opinion articles on topics such as immigration the minimum wage and urban crime 19 In an email leaked to National Review magazine editor Daniel McCarthy wrote that Unz was acting as if he was the editor of The American Conservative and threatened to resign if the publication s board did not support him over Unz 40 In 2012 Unz published an article in The American Conservative entitled The Myth of American Meritocracy He argued Ivy League universities held an unspoken admissions quota for granting spots to Asian Asian American applicants an Asian quota similar to earlier Jewish quotas and that Jewish students are over represented than merit would suggest which he claimed was caused by unconscious Jewish bias among administrators 41 42 43 The article said that the massive apparent bias could be attributed to Jewish administrators at those universities 44 45 His argument for existence of Asian race based quota was reproduced in a subsequent New York Times special debate feature Fears of an Asian Quota in the Ivy League 46 47 Unz s admissions analysis was contested by academics at Yale who showed that his data grossly underestimates the proportion of Asian Americans 48 Unz s writings on Ivy League admissions were praised by David Duke who said it confirmed Harvard was now under powerful Jewish influence Antisemitic conspiracy theorist Kevin B MacDonald said it was similar to his own view that Jews are at odds with the values of the great majority of non Jewish White Americans 42 45 Unz also compiled the Unz Archive UNZ org a searchable online collection of periodicals books and video that by 2012 held around 25 000 issues of over 120 publications including The American Mercury The Literary Digest Inquiry Collier s Marxism Today New Politics and various pulp fiction and romance magazines 49 50 51 Nick Gillespie of Reason called it one of the Web s great archive projects 50 The Unz Review Edit In November 2013 Unz launched the website The Unz Review for which he serves as editor in chief and publisher 42 The Unz Review describes itself as presenting controversial perspectives largely excluded from the American mainstream media 2 Unz says he mostly posts articles that have already been published and I don t even read most of the articles I publish and I certainly don t edit them I m busy 45 It has been described by the Associated Press as a hodgepodge of views from corners of both the left and right 52 and by the New York Times as far right 53 According to the Anti Defamation League ADL in 2014 the webzine is an outlet for certain writers to attack Israel and Jews 42 The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it a white nationalist publication 4 In 2016 a research fellow at the ADL said I haven t seen Ron Unz write anything anti Semitic himself but he really gives a platform to anti Semites 45 The ADL and others criticized Unz for a 600 000 grant for research in evolutionary biology to Gregory Cochran a professor who argued that homosexuality may be caused by a gay germ 45 Ralph Nader while running with Unz for Harvard board of overseers called him a very nuanced guy He should not be stereotyped as a lot of the world of identity politics does 32 The Unz Foundation of which he is president has donated to individuals and organizations which are alleged by the ADL to have published or expressed opinions that are antisemitic or in the case of Norman Finkelstein are anti Israel In 2009 2010 and 2011 it gave Paul Craig Roberts 108 000 74 000 to Philip Giraldi 75 000 to Finkelstein 80 000 to CounterPunch and 60 000 to Philip Weiss co editor of the Mondoweiss website 42 54 In addition the Unz Foundation has given grants to Alison Weir founder of If Americans Knew 42 He has donated tens of thousands of dollars to VDARE which he admits is a quasi white nationalist website but has said they write interesting things 55 5 56 In 2017 The Unz Review received public attention when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was criticized after tweeting an article by a columnist counter terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi titled America s Jews Are Driving America s Wars published in the webzine 57 58 Since their 2014 article the ADL commented in October 2018 that Unz has embraced hardcore anti Semitism denied the Holocaust and endorsed the claim that Jews consume the blood of non Jews referring to blood libel 3 In July 2018 in articles for The Unz Review he wrote about the claims in the Czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford s The International Jew Ford s work a series of antisemitic pamphlets published in the 1920s appeared to Unz to be quite plausible and factually oriented even sometimes overly cautious in their presentation 3 He partly accepted the standard consensus on the Protocols but believes they were assembled by someone who was generally familiar with the secretive machinations of elite international Jews against the existing governments who drafted the document to outline his view of their strategic plans 3 In August 2018 Unz made use of Holocaust denial arguments and wrote I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false and quite possibly almost entirely so 3 That same year The Unz Review published material written by Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett 59 39 60 61 while Unz himself defended David Irving who lost his libel case against Deborah Lipstadt Unz also implied that Mossad was involved in the murders of President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert 39 Writing about the 2001 September 11 attacks in a September 2018 article for his Review Unz stated the vast weight of the evidence clearly points in a single direction implicating Israel and its Mossad intelligence service with the case being overwhelmingly strong in motive means and opportunity 62 In 2016 Unz self published The Myth of American Meritocracy and Other Essays a hardcover collection of most of his writings including nearly all of his print articles 56 References Edit a b c Hornblower Margot June 8 1998 The Man Behind Prop 227 CNN Archived from the original on July 10 2017 Retrieved June 9 2018 a b Indiana U says it can t fire prof who made racist sexist and homophobic remarks CBC Radio November 25 2019 Archived from the original on November 9 2021 Retrieved November 9 2021 a b c d e California Entrepreneur Ron Unz Launches a Series of Rhetorical Attacks on Jews Anti Defamation League October 4 2018 Archived from the original on June 12 2019 Retrieved November 30 2018 a b Gais Hannah January 19 2021 Meet the White Nationalist Organizer Who Spewed Hate Against Lawmakers Southern Poverty Law Center Archived from the original on March 3 2021 Retrieved November 9 2021 a b Krantz Laura April 16 2016 Harvard critic faces scrutiny on donations Boston Globe Archived from the original on November 30 2018 Retrieved November 30 2018 a b Willis Doug May 1 1994 Ron Unz Science prodigy turns into candidate The Press Enterprise Riverside CA Associated Press p A16 via NewsBank a b Foster Douglas November 24 1999 Being Ron Unz LA Weekly Archived from the original on June 22 2018 Retrieved June 22 2018 a b c d e Miller Matthew July 19 1999 Man With a Mission Ron Unz s Improbable Assault on the Powers That Be in California The New Republic Vol 221 pp 24 29 ISSN 0028 6583 via NewsBank a b c d Bruni Frank June 14 1998 The California Entrepreneur who Beat Bilingual Teaching The New York Times Archived from the original on October 22 2016 Retrieved February 18 2017 Moody s Corporation Acquires Wall Street Analytics MWSA News Moody s Corporation December 18 2006 Archived from the original on October 28 2007 Retrieved September 14 2013 a b Wallace Amy May 8 1994 Unlikely Path Led to Wilson Foe s Far Right Challenge Politics A computer genius with a passion for Greek philosophy Ron Unz has set out to jolt the GOP The Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved December 24 2020 1994 Statement of Vote California Secretary of State Archived from the original on December 22 2008 Reeves Phil May 17 1994 Nerds seek revenge in Californian poll Apathy marks the run up to the contest for governor The Independent Archived from the original on June 9 2015 Retrieved December 24 2020 Arguments in favor Archived December 24 2008 at the Wayback Machine of 1998 California Ballot Proposition 227 Notes by Steve Krashen on the Unz Attack February 9 1998 Archived from the original on March 20 2006 Crawford James 2000 At War with Diversity Clevedon Multilingual Matters ISBN 1 85359 505 5 Tench Megan November 3 2002 Heated battle over English immersion intensifies Boston Globe p B 6 Retrieved March 10 2018 via pqarchiver com Galvin William Francis Statewide Ballot Questions Statistics by Year 1919 2018 sec state ma us Archived from the original on April 9 2021 a b Medina Jennifer November 26 2013 Conservative Leads Effort to Raise Minimum Wage in California The New York Times Archived from the original on November 9 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Haver Johanna J 2013 English for the Children Mandated by the People Skewed by Politicians and Special Interests Lanham Rowman amp Littlefield Education ISBN 9781475802023 Streisand Betsy April 26 1999 A one man band s new song U S News amp World Report Vol 126 no 16 p 42 a b York Anthony October 5 1999 Feinstein gets a challenger Salon com Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Wood Daniel B April 6 1999 Pruning California s political money tree The Christian Science Monitor Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Purdum Todd S March 25 1999 California Republican Tries Altering Campaign Finance The New York Times Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Millionaire GOP er backs wage boost Politico Associated Press January 11 2014 Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Gledhill Lynda December 1 1999 Unz Bows Out of U S Senate Race The San Francisco Chronicle p A3 via NewsBank Wood Daniel B March 9 2000 With initiatives California tilts conservative The Christian Science Monitor Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 a b Patterson Robert The Missing Plank of the GOP Platform The Natural Family Archived from the original on June 16 2018 Retrieved June 16 2018 Abramsky Sasha April 8 2014 What If the Minimum Wage Were 15 an Hour The Nation Archived from the original on May 29 2018 Retrieved May 29 2018 Saul Stephanie January 14 2016 How Some Would Level the Playing Field Free Harvard Degrees The New York Times Archived from the original on February 6 2017 Retrieved February 18 2017 Adamczyk Alicia January 15 2016 Group Says Harvard Tuition Should Be Free for All Students Money Archived from the original on August 12 2020 a b Gerstein Josh May 19 2016 Ralph Nader declares war on Harvard Politico Archived from the original on November 11 2021 Retrieved November 11 2021 DeCosta Klipa Nik May 23 2016 Ralph Nader fails in bid to be elected to Harvard board Boston com Archived from the original on November 11 2021 Retrieved November 11 2021 Gerstein Josh May 23 2016 Nader bid for Harvard board comes up short Politico Archived from the original on November 11 2021 Retrieved November 11 2021 a b Wildermuth John April 17 2016 Ron Unz s U S Senate race raises concerns of splintered GOP vote San Francisco Chronicle Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved April 19 2019 Krikorian Mark May 27 2016 Ron Unz Immigration Convert National Review Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved April 19 2019 Cadelago Christopher Ron Paul endorses Ron Unz for California s U S Senate seat The Sacramento Bee Archived from the original on September 7 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 California Primary Results June 7 The New York Times September 29 2016 Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved April 19 2019 a b c Sixsmith Ben September 15 2018 The curious case of Ron Unz The Spectator Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved April 19 2019 In June Unz published an essay saluting the remarkable historiography of David Irving In his legal fight against the historian Deborah Lipstadt Unz wrote Irving s work was analysed line by line footnote by footnote by historians who came up empty Readers of expert witness Richard J Evans s report on Irving s scholarship will know this to be false Unz followed this essay with an approving appraisal of the Nazis treatment of France that never once mentioned their millions of murders in Central and Eastern Europe long articles implicating Mossad in the killings of John and Robert Kennedy and a series of analyses of Jewish history which concluded that Judaism entails the enslavement or execution of all non Jews that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a classic of political thought that the Holocaust almost certainly did not take place in a recognisable form and that anti Semitism has in general been well founded Woodruff Betsy August 1 2013 The American Conservative Unfused The National Review Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved April 19 2019 Scheer Jacob August 1 2018 The American Jewish Affirmative Action About Face Tablet Archived from the original on August 9 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 a b c d e f Ron Unz Controversial Writer and Funder of Anti israel Activists Anti Defamation League January 20 2014 Archived from the original on June 12 2018 Retrieved June 13 2018 Pinker Steven September 4 2014 The Trouble With Harvard The New Republic ISSN 0028 6583 Archived from the original on February 27 2018 Ingall Marjorie February 2 2018 Alt Right Publication Accuses Jews of Attempting to Indoctrinate America s Young Via Subversive Children s Books Tablet Magazine Archived from the original on November 23 2020 Retrieved March 4 2021 a b c d e Wilson Phil April 25 2016 Controversial English only crusader sets his sights on California s Senate race Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on January 16 2021 Retrieved March 4 2021 Lubin Gus It s Pretty Clear That The Ivy League Discriminates Against Asians Business Insider Archived from the original on November 11 2021 Retrieved November 11 2021 Friedersdorf Conor December 21 2012 Is the Ivy League Fair to Asian Americans The Atlantic Archived from the original on November 11 2021 Retrieved November 11 2021 UP CLOSE What s next for affirmative action Yale Daily News September 22 2014 Archived from the original on January 23 2021 Retrieved March 4 2021 Bates Stephen Spring 2012 The Periodical Table PDF The Wilson Quarterly 36 2 15 Archived PDF from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 a b Gillespie Nick October 3 2012 Why The Internet is Great or The Influence of Encounter and UNZ org Reason com Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Wood Mike April 18 2012 Learning about our tradition Solidarity No 242 p 10 Oxford Andrew September 21 2017 Ex CIA agent sparks Twitter controversy by sharing commentary on Jews AP News Associated Press Archived from the original on March 14 2022 Retrieved November 11 2021 Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed The New York Times October 17 2018 Archived from the original on October 17 2018 Retrieved November 10 2021 Elder of Ziyon December 12 2013 New York Times Others Praised Anti Semitic and Slanderous Article The Algemeiner Archived from the original on April 21 2019 Retrieved April 21 2019 Duehren Andrew M Thompson Daphne C April 16 2016 Overseers Candidate Donates to Quasi White Nationalist Group The Harvard Crimson Archived from the original on April 19 2019 Retrieved April 19 2019 a b Rosenberg John S April 26 2016 The Quiet Campaign Harvard Magazine Archived from the original on November 28 2020 Retrieved December 2 2020 Tatum Sophie September 22 2017 Ex CIA operative apologizes for tweet CNN Archived from the original on November 30 2018 Retrieved November 30 2018 Kirchick James September 25 2017 Valerie Plame s Real Blunder Tablet Archived from the original on May 31 2019 Retrieved May 20 2019 Ross Alexander Reid March 14 2019 World News Haaretz com Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Following Sacha Baron Cohen s speech here is ADL s short list of social media accounts that should have been removed long ago Anti Defamation League November 25 2019 Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Ron Unz L Observatoire du conspirationnisme Conspiracy Watch L Observatoire du conspirationnisme in French November 8 2021 Archived from the original on November 10 2021 Retrieved November 10 2021 Antisemitic Conspiracies About 9 11 Endure 20 Years Later Anti Defamation League September 9 2021 Archived from the original on June 13 2022 Retrieved June 22 2022 Further reading EditCrawford James 1997 The Campaign Against Proposition 227 A Post Mortem Bilingual Research Journal 21 1 1 29 doi 10 1080 15235882 1997 10815599 William Ryan 2002 The Unz Initiatives and the Abolition of Bilingual Education Boston College Law Review 43 2 487 519 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ron Unz Official website The Unz Review Ron Unz at Ballotpedia Appearances on C SPAN Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ron Unz amp oldid 1146963073, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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