Unz, Ron (1961-)

Ronald Keeva Unz, a theoretical physicist by training, made his multimillion-dollar fortune with Wall Street Analytics, a software company he founded in 1988. In the 1990s, he set his sights on the political arena, resulting in a couple of failed attempts at political office. Unz is best known for his political attacks on bilingual education. He sponsored, and bankrolled, voter initiatives in several states that sought the dismantling of bilingual education programs, as discussed in this entry.

Unz was born September 20,1961, in Los Angeles, California. He was raised by his grandmother and mother, whose family had emigrated from Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. He grew up in a low-income household that sometimes depended on the welfare system to make ends meet. Unz learned Hebrew by attending a synagogue with his grandmother, even though he did not identify himself as Jewish or practice religion. He attended public schools in the San Fernando Valley, a suburban area of Los Angeles, where he excelled as a student.

In 1983, Unz graduated from Harvard with a double major in theoretical physics and ancient history. He went on for graduate work at Cambridge University, where he studied theoretical physics with well-known professors, including the notable scientist Stephen Hawking. After being enrolled in the doctoral program at Stanford University for 2 years, Unz left without completing his degree. In 1987, he founded the software company Wall Street Analytics.

Unz entered the political scene in 1994, when he made an unsuccessful bid (with less than 35% of the vote) to be the Republican gubernatorial nominee in California's primary elections. He also entered, and subsequently dropped out of, the race for the U.S. Senate seat in California in 2000. Unz gained notoriety because of his staunch opposition to bilingual education. He has been accused of involving himself with initiatives against bilingual education to increase his name recognition for possible future political aspirations. In 1997, he founded an organization called English for the Children, which claims as its sole mission to “end bilingual education nationwide in the near future.”

Between 1998 and 2002, Unz sponsored and financially backed four English for the Children initiatives seeking to dismantle bilingual education programs and to replace them with short-term Structured-English Immersion (SEI) programs. Unz has asserted that special language support is not necessary beyond one year of English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction; however, he has not presented research-based evidence that this belief can be confirmed empirically. Research has actually shown the opposite: that special language support for language learners should be offered for several years to ensure complete mastery of the language.

Lack of research evidence notwithstanding, the Unz-inspired initiatives succeeded in three of the four states where they were launched:

• In 1998, Proposition 227 in California passed with 61% of the vote.
• In 2000, Proposition 203 in Arizona passed with 63% of the vote.
• In 2002, Question 2 in Massachusetts passed with 70% of the vote.
• In 2002, Amendment 31 in Colorado failed, with 56% voting against the initiative.

In addition to contributing his own funds, Unz successfully raised millions of dollars to support his initiatives. Subsequent analyses showed that he won over many voters through a number of factors such as well-funded political and effective media campaigning, claims that bilingual education is a “colossal failure,” ambiguous wording of initiatives, and selecting assimilated antibilingual education Latinos to serve as local chairpersons in each state.

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