The University of Southern California (USC) is under fire after canceling the California gubernatorial debate with less than 24 hours’ notice. The reason? None of the polling candidates are people of color. It was a crushingly revealing moment in a state where universities have long defied voters who demanded an end to affirmative action in admissions.
USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future and ABC/KABC Los Angeles were scheduled to co-host the debate at Bovard Auditorium on Tuesday evening. Then it was canceled on Monday.
Former Biden Health and Human Services Secretary and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra had sent a letter to President Beong-Soo Kim, alleging “election rigging” and objecting “you disqualified all of the candidates of color from participating.”
For many, USC succeeded in beclowning itself by first defending USC Professor Christian Grose’s “data-driven” selection process and then abruptly canceling the debate lineup selected through that process. If that seems incomprehensible, welcome to American higher education.
The cancellation is only the latest unexpected turn in the election, where the two top vote-getters will face each other in a runoff election.
California Democrats are in a panic as two Republicans currently top the polling: Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and commentator Steve Hilton.
At the same time, the leading Democrats include controversial candidates such as Rep. Katie Porter and Rep. Eric Swalwell. Porter is best known nationally for spewing profanity and abuse at staff members. Last year, Swalwell was outvoted by Rep. Raul Grijalva, who died in March 2025. However, they are still doing markedly better than Becerra with voters.
USC insisted that it “vigorously defends the independence, objectivity, and integrity of USC Professor Christian Grose, whose data-driven candidate viability formula is based on extensive research and enjoys broad academic support.”
That “data-driven system” produced a lineup of Bianco and Hilton as well as Democrats Tom Steyer, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Rep. Katie Porter, and Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Advocates then went into full rage, calling the process racist and rigged. Becerra declared:
“USC goes to great lengths to justify its exclusionary candidate formula. But you can’t escape the detestable outcome: you disqualified all of the candidates of color from participating while you invited a white candidate who has NEVER polled higher than some of the candidates of color, including me.”
However, the methodology considered both polling percentage and fundraising with the polling given greater weight.
Becerra has been shown at 3 percent, notably within the statistical margin of error for most polls. In other words, he could be closer to zero. (He is shown as tied with Mahan, who Becerra appears to be referencing in his letter as lacking higher polling).
USC then yielded after trying to expand the number of participants to appease objectors. In a statement, USC stated:
“We recognize that concerns about the selection criteria for tomorrow’s gubernatorial debate have created a significant distraction from the issues that matter to voters. Unfortunately, USC and [debate co-sponsor] KABC have not been able to reach an agreement on expanding the number of candidates at tomorrow’s debate. As a result, USC has made the difficult decision to cancel tomorrow’s debate and will look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues.”
Becerra took a victory lap: “We fought. We won! … Thank you to everyone who stood up, raised hell and demanded justice. Never give up when you’re fighting for fairness!”
At least Becerra’s position is comprehensible. He has long defended affirmative action in California. Indeed, despite statewide votes against the practice, California universities continue to be accused of applying racial criteria in admissions. Becerra is effectively demanding such action for himself as a “candidate of color.”
USC was left stumbling in search of a place to hide. USC scholars defended the process that USC affectively scuttled:
“All of us expect and welcome critical engagement from inside and outside the academy. What Professor Grose has faced, however, is not substantive or methodological debate. Attacks and insinuations from members of the political classes include completely baseless allegations of election-rigging, inconsistency, bias and data manipulation. These are harmful character assassinations, not substantive debate. They are of a piece with other attempts to strong-arm or malign scholars that have become all too common in America.
Whatever their intent, the effect of these attacks is to diminish academic freedom and chill scholarly willingness to add their voices to the public square. It is imperative that universities defend their faculties’ integrity when it is unfairly attacked.”
That is a powerful statement if one does not then consider that the university caved, cancelled the debate, and meekly said that it will “look for other opportunities to educate voters on the candidates and issues.” The “strong-arming” succeeded.
What is particularly disappointing is that I just spoke at USC and was impressed with the members of the USC community seeking to restore a diversity of viewpoints. The event was sponsored by The Center for the Political Future, which was the sponsor of the debate. It was also organized by the USC Open Dialogue Project and the USC chapter of the Heterodox Academy. Both have written in defense of this process.
Professor Morris Levy with Heterodox wrote: “[USC’s] message is unmistakable: USC was allowing “concerns” and a public “distraction” to override its own institutional conviction that the selection formula was data-driven and backed by research.”
So Heterodox, The Center for the Political Future, and ABC7 issued statements indicating that they were prepared to go forward and also defended the process of selection. That left only USC.
In this controversy, USC succeeded in finding the least defensible ground to make its stand. It denounced the cancel campaign but then effectively yielded to it.
The alternative is to stand by your race-blind, data-driven process and hold the debate for all invited candidates willing to attend.
Where USC was criticized recently for its fake punt in the game with Northwestern, it actually punted in this play and left the field.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
N.B: This column was altered to change the attribution of a quote to Mr. Levy.
While I’d love to see “the black face of white supremacy” on the ticket again, I don’t think Larry Elder’s melanin would satisfy the neo-Marxist pinheads.
How is this different than Trump favoring white immigrants instead of “sh_thole countries” (Trump’s terminology) or Monica Goodling during the Bush Administration purging the U.S. Department of Justice of Democrats, Liberals and LGBT federal employees.
Why not offer some fair & balanced context? Extremists on both sides do it.
It’s very different. This is one University canceling a debate for a very stupid reason. That doesn’t mean there can’t be debates. Other people often put on debates. There are other Universities in California that can host debates. The League of Women Voters often hosts debates. The candidate could agree to debate and use their campaign money to host their own debate. Although the reason for canceling the debate is about as liberal, woke and stupid as I have ever heard it is a non issue.
Now the whites in South Africa are being systematically murdered. They have no other options. That is our law for asylum, political asylum from threats of violence and death. No economic asylum. I you don’t like that law work to change it legally through the legislative process. Trump is following the law. Joe Biden broke the law with every illegal he left into the country for economic reasons.
Yes we want immigrants. But we want immigrants with the same values as the majority of US citizens share. We want immigrants the respect democracy and freedom of religion. Islam is not just religion, it is also a system of governance and a judicial system. The clerics interpret what Allah says in the Koran and that is their law. That is incompatible with democracy. Shari law works the same way, it is base on the Koran, which is incompatible with our western law and our Constitution. But Islam will use Democracy to conquer and destroy the West and then impose their religion and law on us. To think otherwise is not only ignorant and stupid, it is dangerous. Just look at Europe right now.
We want immigrants capable of being self sustaining not a drain on our resources and people who increase our taxes. We certainly don’t want violent criminals or fraudsters. The South Americans meet the criteria of who we want, they share our values, they don’t try to impose their religion, system of governance and law on us. They are mostly honest people.
You are trying to conflate two very separate issues to confuse people. A known tactic of the liberal troll, but your effort is pathetic.
These people couldn’t arrange two objects in a straight line.
It’s like Alice in Wonderland.
Watson v. RNC- postmarked, 5 days after election day, blah blah . The overseas military can email their ballots. Let’s all do that on Election DAY. No, computer? Borrow from your grandkids blah blah. ..
Present an ID? Present a bona-fide address, computers can check at the speed of light, right Mr. Musk? And across all 50 States.
Why would anyone think democrats cheat when they’ve tried assassination twice and then WASTED time and money for 4 years on impeachment. Beats me.
Computers have IDs. Try using it for 300,000 dead people still voting.
USC is now playing Judge Haller to its own process. “That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought out methodology. Overruled.”
The university spent a week insisting that its debate criteria were race blind, research based, and consistent with national practice, then folded the moment elected officials and low polling candidates started shouting “racist” and threatening a boycott. At this point the only “methodology” that really matters in higher education is a simple two step formula: count the number of angry emails and decide whether you are more afraid of your critics than of your own principles.
Olly, I’ve thought about citizen capacity and self government. I think it goes like this nowadays.
Man serves two masters, pain and pleasure. Man has reason a free will. Democrats are saying, your laws made of reason and will get in the way of my instinct. My instincts give me the greatest pleasure and your laws are a pain.
From this observation one nation living in tranquility cannot be done.
I’ve interjected here OT. No need to reply and have a pleasurable evening.
Anan, first, it seems necessary to ask: who presumes the authority to define “tranquility”? If tranquility means only that I am spared an oppressive government, that no one is attempting to strip me of my rights, and that I am left free to pursue my own happiness under a framework of ordered liberty, then “tranquility” cannot honestly be invoked to justify a managed, compliant populace. On that understanding, the appeal to tranquility becomes a demand for space in which free men may actually live as such.
Second, the question of “citizen capacity” is not novel, and it is not merely theoretical. It has been done. At the American founding, citizens were formed intellectually, morally, and religiously for self‑government in conditions that were anything but serene by our standards, and yet they bore the weight of republican liberty. It has taken sustained and deliberate work, culturally, educationally, and bureaucratically, to unform that capacity and to teach successive generations to regard themselves less as governors and more as clients or wards of the state.
In other words, the issue is not whether citizens will be formed, but what they will be formed for. If we form them to be servants of the state, we will indeed obtain a species of “tranquility,” but it will be the stillness of dependence. If we form them for self‑government, our tranquility will necessarily be noisier, riskier, and more demanding, but it will be the tranquility of a free people shaping their own common life. It has been done before. That alone is proof that it can be done again, if we want it and if we are willing to undertake the work of formation.
Well no, Olly, that’s not what I mean at all. Instinct rejects the orderliness you’ve mentioned.
Have a pleasant orderly evening. 😂.
USC just put out a statement, saying:
We have a dream, that we will one day live in a nation where our children will not be judged by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin. We are doing our small part to achieve that noble dream.
So elections aren’t worth having in California if a minority is not on.the ballot? Maybe Newsom will just appoint a minority to be
He should just start going out in blackface…..AGAIN!!
“[Racial separation] [is necessary], and [though difficult] must be effected by colonization… The enterprise is a difficult one, but ‘where there is a will there is a way’; and what colonization needs most is a hearty will… Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time [not against] our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857