U.S. English
Encyclopedia
U.S. English is the umbrella name for two American political
advocacy group
s founded in 1983 by Senator S. I. Hayakawa
and Dr. John Tanton
to advocate the adoption of the English language
as the official language
of the United States of America.
The group operates two separate non-profit entities out of its headquarters in Washington DC: U.S. English, Inc. and U.S. English Foundation.
and holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Architecture.
A naturalized citizen, Mujica was born in Antofagasta
, Chile, and moved to the United States in 1964. An architect by trade, Mujica was the Chairman/CEO of the Pace Group, an international architecture and planning firm, from 1983-1987. He is fluent in five languages and lives in Washington, D.C. while spending weekends in Boca Raton, Florida
.
He is married to Georgetown University
professor of Spanish and novelist Barbara Mujica
.
, Saul Bellow
, Walter Cronkite
, Norman Cousins
, Gore Vidal
, Norman Podhoretz
, and Arnold Schwarzenegger
. Some of them are no longer affiliated with the group. Schwarzenegger is still a board member. The gallerist André Emmerich
(d. 2007), Charles Scripps
, Togo Tanaka
and the nobel prize laureate Rosalyn Yalow (d. 2007) were among the other past members of the advisory board.
, Ph.D., Edward A. Capano, Denton Cooley
, M.D., Midge Decter
, Jorge Delgado
, Dinesh Desai, Mrs. Richard DeVos
, George Gilder
, Nathan Glazer
, Ph.D., Charles Gogolak, Lee Majors
, Laura McKenzie, Harvey Meyerhoff, Barbara Mujica
, Ph.D., Alex Olmedo
, Arnold Palmer
, Margie Petersen, Norman Podhoretz
, Donald M. Ross, Randolph Rowland, James Schlesinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger
, Norman D. Shumway
, Rodney Smith
, Alex Trebek
, George W. Wilson, and Roger Wildermuth . To date, the United States federal government has recognized no official language, even though nearly all federal, state and local government business is conducted in English. Some states and territories do have English as an official language; a few have passed laws embracing another language alongside English, such as Hawaiian
in the state of Hawaii
. In total, 30 states have English as their official language. The U.S. House of Representatives passed English as the official language in 1996, but the Senate did not act on the measure before the conclusion of the 104th Congress.
In the view of U.S. Englishs members, making English the official language of the U.S. would mean that all government business must be conducted in English, "with commonsense exceptions" of necessity, for example the dissemination of public-health information to non-English speaking immigrant communities.
Opponents of the goals of the U.S. English organization or of English as the official language object that the practice would express a bias against immigrants who have not yet learned English. U.S. English suggests that the practice would instead encourage immigrants to learn English more quickly, and thereby reap greater economic and political benefits. Thus, in the view of many supporters of this approach—including members of other English-only advocacy groups—the move to make English the only official language can have benefits for non-English speakers, and is not a form of legalized discrimination.
Walter Cronkite
was once a board member of the organization, while Linda Chavez
was once executive director. A leak by the Arizona Republic newspaper of a memo from John Tanton, which some including Cronkite believed went too far in its characterization of Latinos, prompted Chavez and Cronkite to resign. Cronkite called the memo "embarrassing". John Tanton also severed his ties to the group in 1988 following the leak of the memo, and is no longer associated with U.S. English; he later went on to found a separate pro-official English group, ProEnglish
.
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
advocacy group
Advocacy group
Advocacy groups use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and/or policy; they have played and continue to play an important part in the development of political and social systems...
s founded in 1983 by Senator S. I. Hayakawa
S. I. Hayakawa
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa was a Canadian-born American academic and political figure of Japanese ancestry. He was an English professor, and served as president of San Francisco State University and then as United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983...
and Dr. John Tanton
John Tanton
John H. Tanton, M.D., is a retired ophthalmologist from Petoskey, Michigan, and an influential activist in efforts aimed at reducing immigration levels in the United States. He was organizer and first chairman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform , a non-profit educational group that...
to advocate the adoption of the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as the official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
of the United States of America.
The group operates two separate non-profit entities out of its headquarters in Washington DC: U.S. English, Inc. and U.S. English Foundation.
Current Leadership
Mauro E. Mujica is the current Chairman of the Board/CEO of U.S English. He has held that position since 1993. He was educated at Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Architecture.
A naturalized citizen, Mujica was born in Antofagasta
Antofagasta
Antofagasta is a port city in northern Chile, about north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2002 census, the city has a population of 296,905...
, Chile, and moved to the United States in 1964. An architect by trade, Mujica was the Chairman/CEO of the Pace Group, an international architecture and planning firm, from 1983-1987. He is fluent in five languages and lives in Washington, D.C. while spending weekends in Boca Raton, Florida
Boca Raton, Florida
Boca Raton is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, USA, incorporated in May 1925. In the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 74,764; the 2006 population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 86,396. However, the majority of the people under the postal address of Boca Raton, about...
.
He is married to Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
professor of Spanish and novelist Barbara Mujica
Barbara Mujica
Barbara Mujica is an American novelist, short story writer and critic.Her latest novels are Sister Teresa , based on the life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Frida, based on the life of Frida Kahlo...
.
Early Advisory Board Members
Early advisory board members included Alistair CookeAlistair Cooke
Alfred Alistair Cooke KBE was a British/American journalist, television personality and broadcaster. Outside his journalistic output, which included Letter from America and Alistair Cooke's America, he was well known in the United States as the host of PBS Masterpiece Theater from 1971 to 1992...
, Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
, Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins
Norman Cousins was an American political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.-Early life and education:...
, Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
, and Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
. Some of them are no longer affiliated with the group. Schwarzenegger is still a board member. The gallerist André Emmerich
André Emmerich
André Emmerich was an influential German born American gallerist who specialized in the color field school and pre-Columbian art while also taking on artists such as David Hockney and Al Held....
(d. 2007), Charles Scripps
Charles Scripps
Charles E. Scripps was chairman of the board of the E. W. Scripps Company, a media conglomerate founded by his grandfather, Edward W. Scripps...
, Togo Tanaka
Togo Tanaka
Togo W. Tanaka was an American newspaper journalist and editor who reported on the difficult conditions in the Manzanar internment camp, where he was one of 110,000 Japanese Americans who had been relocated after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.-Early life and...
and the nobel prize laureate Rosalyn Yalow (d. 2007) were among the other past members of the advisory board.
Current Advisory Board Members
Current members of the Advisory Board are listed as: Jacques BarzunJacques Barzun
Jacques Martin Barzun is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United...
, Ph.D., Edward A. Capano, Denton Cooley
Denton Cooley
Denton Arthur Cooley is an American heart surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley is also founder and surgeon in-chief of the Texas Heart Institute, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at St...
, M.D., Midge Decter
Midge Decter
-Biography:Midge Rosenthal Decter was born on July 25, 1927 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She attended the University of Minnesota, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and New York University....
, Jorge Delgado
Jorge Delgado
Jorge Luis Delgado Rueda is a Uruguayan football striker. He currently plays for Club Aurora in Bolivia.-External links:* at BoliviaGol.com * at LFP.es...
, Dinesh Desai, Mrs. Richard DeVos
Richard DeVos
Richard DeVos, Sr. is an American businessman, co-founder of Amway along with Jay Van Andel , and owner of the Orlando Magic NBA basketball team...
, George Gilder
George Gilder
George F. Gilder is an American writer, techno-utopian intellectual, Republican Party activist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute...
, Nathan Glazer
Nathan Glazer
Nathan Glazer is an American sociologist who taught at the University of California, Berkeley and for several decades at Harvard University...
, Ph.D., Charles Gogolak, Lee Majors
Lee Majors
Lee Majors is an American television, film and voice actor, best known for his starring role as Colonel Steve Austin in The Six Million Dollar Man and as Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy ....
, Laura McKenzie, Harvey Meyerhoff, Barbara Mujica
Barbara Mujica
Barbara Mujica is an American novelist, short story writer and critic.Her latest novels are Sister Teresa , based on the life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Frida, based on the life of Frida Kahlo...
, Ph.D., Alex Olmedo
Alex Olmedo
Alejandro "Alex" Rodríguez Olmedo is a former tennis player from Peru, who was ranked as the top amateur player in the world in 1959. Although born and raised in Peru, he came to Southern California and was mentored by Perry T. Jones, President of the Southern California Tennis Association at the...
, Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmer
Arnold Daniel Palmer is an American professional golfer, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of men's professional golf. He has won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and Champions Tour, dating back to 1955...
, Margie Petersen, Norman Podhoretz
Norman Podhoretz
Norman B. Podhoretz is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.-Early life:The son of Julius and Helen Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn...
, Donald M. Ross, Randolph Rowland, James Schlesinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
, Norman D. Shumway
Norman D. Shumway
Norman David Shumway is a former California Republican politician.After moving to California, he was educated in the Stockton public school system. He received an Associate of Arts degree from Stockton College in 1954, and was graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Science degree...
, Rodney Smith
Rodney Smith
Rodney Smith was a hospice caregiver for a number of years, and is currently an author and the guiding teacher of the Seattle Insight Meditation Society, an organization he founded in 1993. Smith was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan and drafted during the Vietnam War, serving in Belgium as a medic...
, Alex Trebek
Alex Trebek
George Alexander "Alex" Trebek is a Canadian American game show host who has been the host of the game show Jeopardy! since 1984, and prior to that, he hosted game shows such as Pitfall and High Rollers. He has appeared in numerous television series, usually as himself...
, George W. Wilson, and Roger Wildermuth . To date, the United States federal government has recognized no official language, even though nearly all federal, state and local government business is conducted in English. Some states and territories do have English as an official language; a few have passed laws embracing another language alongside English, such as Hawaiian
Hawaiian language
The Hawaiian language is a Polynesian language that takes its name from Hawaii, the largest island in the tropical North Pacific archipelago where it developed. Hawaiian, along with English, is an official language of the state of Hawaii...
in the state of Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. In total, 30 states have English as their official language. The U.S. House of Representatives passed English as the official language in 1996, but the Senate did not act on the measure before the conclusion of the 104th Congress.
In the view of U.S. Englishs members, making English the official language of the U.S. would mean that all government business must be conducted in English, "with commonsense exceptions" of necessity, for example the dissemination of public-health information to non-English speaking immigrant communities.
Opponents of the goals of the U.S. English organization or of English as the official language object that the practice would express a bias against immigrants who have not yet learned English. U.S. English suggests that the practice would instead encourage immigrants to learn English more quickly, and thereby reap greater economic and political benefits. Thus, in the view of many supporters of this approach—including members of other English-only advocacy groups—the move to make English the only official language can have benefits for non-English speakers, and is not a form of legalized discrimination.
Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
was once a board member of the organization, while Linda Chavez
Linda Chavez
Linda Chavez is an American author, commentator, and radio talk show host. She is also a Fox News analyst, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, has a syndicated column that appears in newspapers nationwide each week, and sits on the Board of Directors of two Fortune 1000 companies:...
was once executive director. A leak by the Arizona Republic newspaper of a memo from John Tanton, which some including Cronkite believed went too far in its characterization of Latinos, prompted Chavez and Cronkite to resign. Cronkite called the memo "embarrassing". John Tanton also severed his ties to the group in 1988 following the leak of the memo, and is no longer associated with U.S. English; he later went on to found a separate pro-official English group, ProEnglish
ProEnglish
ProEnglish is an American non-profit lobbying organization that supports making English the official language of the United States.-Background:...
.