Custred, Harry Glynn, 1939-

Organizational History

The California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) was co-authored and managed by Glynn Custred and Thomas E. Wood. They began work on the anti-affirmative action legislative initiative in 1991 and developed the campaign for CCRI from that time to 1996 when California voters approved Proposition 209. Their intention in bringing this initiative to the public was to end affirmative action gender and race quotas and preferences in state employment, contracting, and education in California.

Harry Glynn Custred, a professor of anthropology at California State University, Hayward, received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Indiana University. He has received many awards, scholarships, and grants including a Fulbright teaching grant in 1992 to conduct a seminar at the National Institute of Anthropology of Buenos Aires in Argentina on the topic of ethnicity and nationalism. At the time of the initiative campaign, Dr. Custred was a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and a member of the Board of Directors of the California Association of Scholars. His writing includes numerous articles dealing with Andean ethnography, language use in Transylvania, and language boundaries in South America. He co-edited and contributed to the book, Land and Power in Latin America (1979).

Thomas E. Wood, co-author and co-principal of the CCRI with Glynn Custred, was the Executive Director of the California Association of Scholars (CAS) at the time of the CCRI campaign. Wood received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. His doctoral thesis, Empiricism and Current Linguistic Theory, examined the philosophy of language and linguistic theory. Wood taught in the Departments of Philosophy and Religion at California State University, Fresno and the State University of New York, New Paltz. He was also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco from 1989 to 1993. His writing includes three books published by the University of Hawaii Press for the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy: The Mandukya Upanisad and the Agama Sastra (1990), Mind Only (1991) and Nagarjunian Disputations (1994).

--Taken from CCRI, California Civil Rights Initiative flyer, "Thomas E. Wood," circa 1995, California Civil Rights Initiative Records, BANC MSS 2005/179 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

From the guide to the California Civil Rights Initiative records, 1990-1996, (The Bancroft Library.)