Ron Unz

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Ron K. Unz, born 1961, is a former businessman and political activist, best known for an unsuccessful run for the governorship of California, and for sponsoring propositions promoting structured English immersion education. In March 2007, it was announced that he was to succeed Scott McConnell as publisher of The American Conservative.

Unz attended Harvard University, graduating in physics, and then went to Stanford to work on a PhD in theoretical physics, however he flunked out after two years. Unz then went to work in the banking industry writing software for mortgage securities. Unz founded a company called Wall Street Analytics and moved back to Palo Alto California.

Unz briefly enjoyed some minor notoriety in the early 1990s as a quirky Silicon Valley millionaire (even though his fortune was actually made on Wall Street), prior to the explosion of Internet millionaires in the region in late 1990s. Unz's modest fortune, estimated at less than $10 million, is no longer considered particularly noteworthy by the local media.

Unz made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for governor of California in 1994, finishing in third place. In 1998 he sponsored the state's Proposition 227, a proposition to change the state's bilingual education to an opt-in structured English language educational system, which was approved by the voters.

The proposition did not end bilingual education, rather, it allows parents to opt-in to a bilingual education program at the school, if sufficient number of parents petition the school.

Read the full text of Proposition 227