troubling decades later Ruben Navarrette Jr.
I’m troubled by three things in all this: that Alito could have been a member of
such an exclusionary group in the first place; that he saw fit to brag about being a member to win favor with the right-wing
hard-liners in the Reagan Justice Department, many of whom took on the dismantling of affirmative action programs as a pet project; and
that he refuses to own up to this now by claiming that he doesn’t remember the first thing about the group.
That, I don’t like.
Controversial Group
Nominee Touted His Membership in 1985
By Dale Russakoff, Washington Post Staff Writer
As a Princeton
alumnus and professional basketball player, Bill Bradley in 1973 renounced his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, calling it a
“right wing” organization that opposed the admission of women and minorities to the school.
Two years later, another distinguished
alumnus and future U.S. senator, Bill Frist, co-wrote a report denouncing the group for “grossly inaccurate” attacks on the school’s
policies and a “narrow ideological perspective” that had done “a disservice to the university.”