Ed Blum (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images and courtesy of Ed Blum)

SOUTHERN ISRAEL—On December 11, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down NASDAQ's diversity rules for corporate boards. The rules, which had been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), required boards to have at least one member who identifies as a minority or LGBTQ.

The decision was another high-profile victory for Edward Blum, the activist behind 2023's landmark Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-based college admissions.

Born to Yiddish-speaking cobblers in Benton Harbor, Mich., Blum has cited his Jewish upbringing as a formative influence on his values. At the time that the NASDAQ decision came down, he was in Israel on a moshav, or farmer's co-op, pruning tomatoes about three miles from the Gaza border.

The Washington Free Beacon spoke to Blum about his recent victory and his time in the Jewish state. During the interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Blum discussed the significance of the NASDAQ ruling, the next stage of the fight against racial preferences, the mood in Israel after Donald Trump's election, and the joys of Israeli farmwork.

Aaron Sibarium: Most Americans will never serve on a corporate board, and board members have only limited involvement in the day-to-day operations of companies. Why was it so important to challenge the NASDAQ rule?

Edward Blum: While few people ever serve on a corporate board, most Americans own stocks directly or indirectly. Requiring race and sex quotas for boards inhibits corporations from choosing the best-qualified candidates to serve. This outcome serves no one, including those chosen because of their sex and race.

AS: What are the real-world impacts of this decision likely to be?

EB: This opinion will prevent the SEC from wading into areas in which it has no statutory jurisdiction.

AS: What's interesting about this case that the press hasn't picked up on but that you think is important?

EB: I don't know how to answer the question here, and it's a good one, but there were really two parts of the case. One was about administrative law, which my limited legal net doesn't really cover. And then there was the racial aspect of it, which my net does cover. When you read the opinion, it was more of an administrative law opinion.

AS: People often treat questions about the administrative state as separate from questions about civil rights and racial preferences. But it seems like the lesson of this case is that reining in the administrative state can rein in racial preferences too. Do you think there's a strategic lesson here?

EB: Yes. It's kind of like the old Marshall McLuhan line: The medium is the message. The administrative state has promoted and, in some respects, demanded the use of race and ethnicity in administrative policies, not only through the SEC but other agencies.

So I think what you've just said is correct.

AS: You've gotten affirmative action outlawed in college admissions. You've successfully challenged a host of race-based fellowships and grant programs in corporate America. Now NASDAQ is ending these diversity quotas. What's next? Where does the fight against racial preferences go from here?

EB: I think the big fight will be uncovering, disclosing, and eliminating what we believe are racial proxies that are being implemented by colleges and universities, corporations, cultural institutions, and the like. We are in the early stages of learning about what colleges and universities and others are doing. But it is likely that my organization, as well as our allied legal friends, will be probing and litigating what I call racial proxies.

AS: That would be something like the Thomas Jefferson High School case, right, where they used zip codes as a proxy for race?

EB: Yes. Zip codes are a little fuzzy, but apparently there is some fairly sophisticated census data analysis that is being implemented by the College Board with their landscape tool, and something called the opportunity index, to name just two. The next big challenge in public interest litigation that challenges race and ethnicity will be learning what is being used for racial classifications and preferences instead of the checkbox.

AS: Let's say that universities claim that the reason they're using the opportunity index and zip codes and these other racial proxies is actually that they want socioeconomic diversity. Suppose they insist, "No, no, it has nothing to do with race. It's all about class." Which you don't have a problem with, right?

EB: Correct.

AS: OK. But suppose that this has a racially disparate impact—the zip codes clearly help some racial groups more than others—which leads people to suspect there's an ulterior motive. The schools say they're pursuing socioeconomic diversity, but in practice they seem to be doing affirmative action by other means. How do you deal with that problem?

EB: As we argued all through the Harvard and [University of North Carolina] litigation, lowering the bar a little bit for students who come from modest or disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds is something that we support. Now, we support it if it is applied in all corners of the country where there are kids from modest or lower socioeconomic backgrounds. That means that kids from modest backgrounds who live in rural Missouri or rural Montana or Northern Maine or East Texas will have the same consideration and outcomes as kids who live in predominantly minority neighborhoods.

AS: You told the New York Times last year that your aversion to racial preferences stems in part from your Jewish upbringing. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that upbringing shaped your values?

EB: I'm 72 years old. I was a teenager during the early '60s, you know, up through the late '60s. My mom and dad spoke Yiddish. Of course, they were fluent in English, but they seemed to speak Yiddish to one another all the time.

The civil rights movement was a discussion at our family dinner table in 1964, '65, '66. So were the riots of '68. I was in junior high and high school during those years. Growing up in Houston, Texas, basically the Deep South, this was something we were aware of, that my mother and father talked about. They witnessed and understood racial segregation. They understood policies that barred African Americans from entering certain businesses and restaurants and hotels. We talked about this a lot as a family, and I think that's probably more than anything else what shaped my opinions about this, and maybe energized me as I grew older.

AS: How did your parents react when affirmative action came onto the scene and became a live topic of discussion in the '70s and '80s?

EB: Well, I'll tell you how I reacted to it, and it's sort of an unusual twist. I was at the University of Texas from 1969 through 1973. The introduction of quotas and race-based policies really began around that era. And as an 18- to 20-year-old, I was persuaded that, given what African Americans had gone through, it was a reasonable policy. It wasn't really until the late '70s and early '80s that I transitioned away from that, seeing how unsuccessful and unfair affirmative action was. So my passion for this issue really developed in the late '70s and early '80s. And I will say that there was some evolution on my part.

AS: You said that affirmative action didn't work. Can you talk a bit more about the inefficacy and how that played a role in your thinking?

EB: When I was in graduate school, I met a couple of Asian kids who were undergraduates. They told me about their academic background and how they were attending State University of New York because they had not been admitted to the Ivy Leagues and some of the more prestigious private schools. And these kids came from extremely modest backgrounds. So I started to noodle through that tension, and concluded that you can't remedy past discrimination with new discrimination. That, I think, was the beginning of my revisiting the fairness of race-based affirmative action.

AS: Higher education experienced two big shocks last year. The first was your landmark Supreme Court victory that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. And the second were the campus upheavals after the October 7 terrorist attacks, which sparked a lot of discussion about DEI and anti-Semitism. How, if at all, do you think the post-October 7 controversies have affected your work or changed the debate about racial preferences?

EB: Those are two really big topics, Aaron. Let me see if I can unpack this just a little bit. It is my belief that that opinion in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is one of the most popular Supreme Court opinions in the last generation. I cannot think of another Supreme Court case in which 70 percent of Americans agreed with what the Supreme Court did. So that opinion, I think, not only energized the legal endeavors against race-based policies, but also provided a shield for those who have been reluctant to talk about the unfairness of using race in our public policies. If the Supreme Court strikes down race in higher education, and everyone applauds that, then all of a sudden, people who have been subject to discrimination in employment and contracting feel like if race is wrong in education, it must also be wrong in all of these other areas too.

Between the growth of anti-Semitism on college campuses and the end of racial preferences in higher education, I think Americans feel more emboldened to say, yes, we've got to do something differently. We can't continue using race in our public lives. And I think the embrace of Hamas by campus radicals has shocked not only American Jews but non-Jews as well. Many of us see that there's always been an undercurrent of anti-Semitism just waiting to come out, and October 7 exposed it.

AS: What brought you to the Gaza border?

EB: I volunteered here last year before the IDF launched its attack into Gaza. It was a war zone then, with dozens of Hamas rockets still being launched into Israel daily. I helped to prepare meals for the IDF soldiers who were stationed here (all 800 residents were evacuated), picked fruit since all the Arabs and Thai employees were gone, and worked with the security team in patrolling the community.

AS: How is Israel reacting to the U.S. presidential election?

EB: Joyfully.

AS: Elaborate. How do Israelis think Trump's election will affect life on the ground?

EB: I've been volunteering on a moshav that is three-and-a-half miles from Gaza. A couple of days ago, I was walking back from the tomato hothouse, where I've been pruning tomatoes, and a guy on a tractor and an older guy in a little golf cart stopped me. They wanted to know, "Who are you? Why are you here?" And then the next question was, "Who did you vote for?" I said, "Trump." And they high-fived me.

Then I told them that according to some polls, it looks like about 35 percent of American Jews voted for Trump, and they could not believe it was that low. They thought I was making it up. They just could not believe that 65 percent voted for Harris.

Afterwards I read that 65 percent of Israelis supported Trump, and only 35 percent supported Harris. It was just the opposite. Sixty-five percent of Israelis are for Trump. Thirty-five percent of American Jews were for Trump.

I have been here a little over two weeks. I'm constantly being asked about the election: "What do you think," "Were you happy?" I think Israelis are greatly relieved that Trump won the election, and I think the polling data supports that.

AS: There are obvious policy reasons why they would be relieved. Do you think the divide between how Israelis view Trump and how American Jews view him speaks to a deeper difference in worldviews?

EB: Oh, I think so. Israeli Jews have been surrounded since their founding in 1948 by tens of millions of neighbors who wish to eradicate them, who have done everything possible to murder and destroy the state of Israel. We American Jews have lived in a wonderful bubble since the end of World War II. We endured very modest anti-Semitism through the '50s and '60s, only to see by the mid-'60s it was practically gone.

The life experiences of American Jews are very different from those of Israeli Jews. For one thing, 18-year-olds in Israel, when they graduate from high school, are competing not to be admitted to a top university, but to be admitted to an elite army unit. Young men are constantly positioning themselves to be drafted into the Golani Brigade or one of the other high-profile Israeli defense units. American kids at age 17-18 are competing to get into Emory or Tulane or Duke or University of Chicago. This is a very different life here in Israel compared to what we have in the United States.

AS: It's interesting that in the United States, prestige attaches to institutions like Harvard, which are in many ways the ultimate safe space. But in Israel, prestige attaches to institutions like the Golani Brigade, which are distinguished by how unsafe they are. People who serve in those units go to war and do intense special operations.

EB: That's so well put. In Israel, the kids are competing to be in the most dangerous situations possible. That's really well said.

AS: Last question: You mentioned you were pruning tomatoes. What was that like?

EB: The hothouse is about the size of a football field and covered with some kind of nylon netting. It's about 10 degrees warmer inside the hothouse than outside. There are rows upon rows of grape tomatoes strung up on vines that go up about 8 to 10 feet. My job was to sit on a little box and trim the growth at the base of the tomato vine, because that growth impedes the nutrients in the water from reaching the tomatoes higher up. I did that for about 10 days.

Ed Blum works at a tomato hothouse on the Israel-Gaza border.

The only downside was that I nearly ran out of Advil because I was taking about three or four a day. Bending over, reaching, and cutting can be a little back-breaking for somebody who's 72 years old. But other than that, it was the best job I've ever had.

Source link