Political Correctness at Rutgers

...LAWRENCE'S November gaffe became public thanks to RU's chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP...

...As a matter of public policy, accepting ever larger numbers of potential dropouts does not make a great deal of sense...

...They resent the President because he has consistently opposed their efforts...

...MUCH CONFUSION surrounds the question of exactly what kind of speech is punishable at Rutgers...

...In 1988 it ordered every department and program to hire at least one new black by 1995 or face penalties...

...George Will was one of several commentators who observed that Lawrence helped author his own misfortune by encouraging political correctness...

...The irony did not go unnoticed...

...In fact, the protests themselves inspired a backlash...

...The percentage of faculty who are black has increased from 5.4 to 5.7 per cent...

...It must have been hard to follow, and that is probably why no one present objected to what he said at the time...

...As the faculty bargaining agent it tries to be as virulently antimanagement as the most class-conscious trade union...

...A calamity for him, these events have been particularly painful for a university that is just coming to be recognized as a first-rate institution...

...Once it became clear that the context of his remarks did not make any difference to critics, Lawrence apologized, citing not only his record at Rutgers since he became president in 1990, but also at Tulane University, where as provost he had substantial ly increased the number of black admissions...

...Not long after his arrival, he wrote an open letter saying that "Strength Through Diversity," the motto of RU's Livingston College, should extend to the entire institution, and he has been as good as his word...

...In practice 'diversity' turns out to legitimize a new dogmatism in which minorities take shelter behind a set of beliefs impervious to rational discussion...

...At most a 1 ittle more funding may be made available for race-based programs...

...Mostly, though, the crisis has pointed At a February 3 meeting on campus where the President apologized to about 300 students, one called upon him to resign and then walked out, followed by a good share of the audience...

...Yet Rutgers already does more than most universities to promote diversity, and, though Lawrence dare not say so, it is running up against certain limits...

...Rutgers takes great pride in Robeson's father, its most famous graduate, so the son is a frequent visitor and knows Lawrence personally...

...The Targum seems to do this daily, hardly a surprise since for the past 25 years its editors have been trying to keep the spirit of the '60s alive in the face of overwhelming student apathy...

...None of the many protest events ever attracted more than 700 people, and then only once, while the next largest drew 300, and it was downhill from there...

...A widely advertised demonstration held on February 16 drew only a hundred people, by the Targum's count, and it never errs on the low side...

...Lawrence may have expected the fuss to die down quickly, because he made his slip in the course of defending affirmative action at Rutgers, which, like many universities, routinely admits minority students whose SAT and other scores would otherwise keep them out...

...Nor does it contribute in any significant way to solving the real problems of minorities—poverty, crime, illegitimacy, and the like—which are invariably lost sight of during campus struggles over diversity...

...Today, especially on college campuses, the struggle for freedom and equality has degenerated into the pursuit of (frequently segregated) facilities and privileges in the name of multiculturalism and "diversity...

...The turmoil was certainly spontaneous in origin, but up how reasoned discourse disappears when race becomes the issue...

...In addressing the "larger issues" raised by the confrontation, student activists, the New Brunswick Faculty Council and Lawrence himself have called for redoubled efforts to promote affirmative action...

...This suggests that while some people were hurt by Lawrence's words, others relished the opportunity for a show of force...

...Its president actually attended and taped the Camden meeting...

...Demonstrations began almost at once, with students chanting "Hell no, our genes ain't slow" outside the President's office on the New Brunswick campus...

...A first-year student was quoted as saying, "There is a price that you have to pay...

...Those achievements were supposed to lift up minorities as a whole, not divide them into a crippled underclass and an empowered middle class whose politics are directed at winning marginal benefits and empty symbolic victories...

...So did the rap performer Sista Souljah, a former Rutgers student who is best known locally for her anti white sentiments...

...But several decades of expansion, and the recruitment of a distinguished faculty, have begun to pay off...

...To be exact...

...Disadvantaged students require financial aid, and are more likely to fail or drop out than other students, so that much of the aid is wasted...

...One of them wrote to the Daily Targum, Rutgers' leading student newspaper, that after Lawrence resigns students should "focus our attention on the whole racist, sexist, classist structure that controls Rutgers (and America), in which the replacing of one part doesn't change the entire corrupt machine...

...An obvious lesson here is that the president of a large, multiracial university has to watch his tongue...

...Lawrence's trials began last January 31, when the Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest daily newspaper, ran a front page story reporting that he had told a group of faculty members the "genetic hereditary background" of "disadvantaged" students kept them from scoring well on standardized tests...

...The quota has not been filled, for in the bidding war that political correctness inspires no university can win...

...The full inflammatory sentence, which came after what could be construed as two rhetorical questions, was: "Or do we deal with a disadvantaged population that doesn't have that genetic hereditary background to have a higher average...

...Lawrence is partly to blame for this...

...Consequently, once hired they are hard to keep...

...Indeed, by week three the crisis seemed about over...

...As the late Christopher Lasch pointed out in his The Revolt of the Elites, it is a slogan that "has come to mean the opposite of what it appears to mean...

...another has been the lengthening list of awards and prizes given to faculty members— such as the Pulitzer Prize in Biography for 1994 won by historian David Levering Lewis...

...At one rally, the Targum reported, several residence hall staff members said they felt that under the current student code of conduct they would have to bring up on charges any dormitory resident who used the words Lawrence uttered on November 11...

...The most conspicuous of these was a student sit-in on February 7 during the half-time of a televised basketball game between Rutgers and the University of Massachusetts, then fourth in the national rankings...

...Those who complain or deviate from the unofficial party line can expect reprisals...

...Given what it already is doing, there is little more Rutgers can do to recruit black faculty and promote affirmative action...

...On behalf of the Rainbow Coalition, Jessie Jackson and Angela Davis sent a letter of encouragement...

...Calling the media frenzy "repulsive," the Council's president explained that the original resolution did not express the views of a majority of engineering students...

...the Rutgers code exempts constitutionally protected speech, which Lawrence's remark certainly was...

...Lawrence began to receive support from his fellow academic presidents in New Jersey and from newspapers...

...Like most Eastern state universities, Rutgers had long been in the shadow of its more famous Western cousins...

...It has printed, and endorsed, a host of demands that Rutgers expand its commitment to African-American and Latino students and faculty, including those of the newly-formed United Student Coalition, an umbrella group consisting of 40 campus organizations...

...The AAU P contends that it merely distributed copies of the tape to its 119 campus representatives, and has no idea which member, or members, caught Lawrence's slip and notified the Star Ledger...

...How cynical and, alas, how true...

...To be sure, a few important figures rose to his defense...

...His achievement at Rutgers has been less striking, mainly because Rutgers committed itself to diversity years ago...

...Now it seems as if Rutgers will be best known for losing football teams and Lawrences remark...

...Had it begun, "Are we dealing with," the rhetorical nature of the statement, and its implied negative, would have been more apparent...

...The reasoning seems to be that while aiding the underclass is a hopeless cause, politically incorrect victims can be sacrificed to inspire fear in others and attract a few extra dollars...

...At its February 10 meeting formally supporting Lawrence, the Board of Governors itemized these gains...

...Such statements display the politically correct mind at work...

...Initiatives Lawrence was particularly responsible for include a large increase in minority scholarships and a three-year, $5 million Campaign for Community, Diversity and Educational Excellence...

...This is entirely plausible to those at Rutgers who have heard him make similar, if less dangerous errors—a proclivity some attribute to the excessive workload he carries...

...That there was something ridiculous, not to say malignant, about trying to destroy a person of good will for a slip of the tongue, would never occur to the Targum...

...Along with everyone else who was present, she claimed not to have heard the offending remark...

...That is the case even at the richest schools, as Duke University found out...

...Many women and blacks have been appointed to administrative positions too...

...The media blitz focused on Lawrence, already intense, went national after that incident, and inspired even WILLIAM L. O'NEILL, a veteran contributor to these pages, is a professor of American history at Rutgers Universih: more criticism of him and support for the protesting students...

...Just as Lawrence's position explains why some wished to get him, his personality has a bearing on the relative lack of support he received at first...

...Lawrence refused to resign and seems to have ridden out the crisis, though the damage is likely to persist...

...Because the supply of highly qualified black scholars and scientists is small in relation to demand, raiding other universities has become the chief means of acquiring them...

...Black enrollment has grown from 9.7 to 9.9 per cent during his presidency, while minority student representation has risen from 26.9 to 31.3 per cent...

...The civil rights movement battled lynch mobs, racial segregation—imposed by law in Southern states, by custom in the North—disenfranchisement in the South, and levels of discrimination everywhere that made it virtually impossible for blacks to succeed in any business or profession outside the ghetto...

...Petty and demeaning vendettas are not what was expected after the great victories of the '60s—the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the affirmative actions that followed...

...another was Paul Robeson Jr...

...But to most students and faculty Lawrence is a remote figure, thus he has practically no constituency on campus...

...Those parts of Lawrence's talk on November 11 that have been published show it to be rambling and disjointed...

...The flagship campus in New Brunswick ranks second nationally among predominantly white universities in awarding baccalaureate degrees to African-Americans...

...In the light of these realities, demonstrators lacked a plausible agenda...

...All this had its effect upon student turnouts...

...By this measure Rutgers looks pretty good, ranking eighth among the public AAU members...

...He has said he regards the very idea as so immoral that he refused to read the book, but that the publicity arising from it somehow poisoned his vocabulary, leading him to say the opposite of what he meant...

...At Rutgers, and virtually every major university, students and faculty with any reservations about the politically correct line have learned to be very cautious...

...After half a century of struggle we are still caught in the same dilemma, but what once was tragedy is becoming farce...

...You have to coincide with our rules now...

...In addition, like the entire affair, they show that all those academics who have insisted there is no such thing as PC, or that it is only a club invented by conservatives out to hammer progressive measures, are wrong...

...In seeking his ouster the politically correct were trying to devour an ally, and thereby revealed more nakedly than before the true nature of their business...

...Tides of paper promoting these and other programs flow regularly into faculty mailboxes...

...Duke attracted some important people, only to have them lured away by better outside offers...

...A few black faculty and administrators also spoke up for Lawrence, and so did a number of students...

...Yet, another student leader stated publicly that the Latino Cultural Center came into being only after Lawrence arrived and threw his weight behind it...

...Nevertheless, that some students believe they can be disciplined for verbally challenging the PC line, and know for sure they will be labeled racists if they do, discourages open debate and the free exchange of ideas...

...No one seriously believes that Rutgers can become much more diverse than it is...

...In addition, with many white students now taking five years to get a degree, the norm for minority graduation has been set at six...

...A New York Times editorial asked that he be given a second chance...

...And if it could, what di fference would that make to the mass of poor people whose lives are a million light-years removed from the world of higher education...

...When some 150 students refused to leave the floor the game had to be suspended...

...Even if the apparent coordination was not a calculated move to weaken the university administration at a critical moment, there is no doubt that but for the union no crisis would have developed...

...Sorry is just not going to do it...

...Lawrence attributed his slip to the controversy surrounding The Bell Curve, a book holding that for genetic reasons blacks are inferior to other races...

...In any event, he should have learned by now that political correctness is about intimidation and has nothing to do with justice...

...Or perhaps his audience understood that he meant "environmental" rather than "genetic hereditary" background...

...it was exploited by a small group of campus radicals who have been organizing protests—notably against tuition hikes— for years...

...Waiving the normal entry requirements is a policy he strongly supports, and has talked of expanding...

...Protesters feel abandoned by students who will not join them and faculty members who remain quiet...

...Martin Luther King's dream seems farther away than ever...

...The small turnouts compared with those of the '60s suggest that the movement to oust Lawrence had little grass-roots backing—even from minority students...

...Perhaps Lawrence's current troubles will lead him to think again about whether speech should be restricted at all...

...The total, however, includes black and Latino students who got into Rutgers on merit, so the figure for those affirmatively admitted has to be significantly lower...

...The Star-Ledger story triggered volleys of demands for Lawrence's resignation from black leaders around the state, and from the student governments of Rutgers' many undergraduate schools and colleges...

...Benjamin Cha-vis, recently deposed executive director of the NAACP, appeared in person at a campus rally on February 14...

...This means that dipping deeper into the minority applicant pool would cost agood deal of money, produce a small increase in the number of minority graduates, and further depress the graduation rate of blacks and Latinos...

...Most of the well-publicized cases of faculty and students being disciplined for careless remarks in recent years have involved unknown figures...

...That was made painfully clear by the New Brunswick Faculty Council on February 9, when it resolved that "President Lawrence's ability to lead the university effectively has been seriously compromised," and called upon the Board of Governors to "review his stewardship" in that light...

...On February 13 the College of Engineering Governing Council, one of several student government bodies that had passed a resolution earlier urging Lawrence to step down, reversed itself...

...To attract black (and Hispanic) students universities employ true affirmative action principles by lowering theirad-mission requirements, but here too the law of diminishing returns applies...

...One was Carlton A. Holstrom, chairman of the Board of Governors...

...The chair of one black student organization said, "All the stuff he claims he's responsible for have been the result of student demands...

...But Lawrence is not only president of a large state university—47,000 students spread over three campuses—he is also totally committed to affirmative action...

...Despite the AAUP's denials, it scheduled a press conference to denounce Lawrence's words for the very day the story broke, and that happened to occur as bargaining talks with the administration were about to begin...

...The recent admission of Rutgers into the prestigious AAU was one encouraging sign...

...A third possibility is that the words were intended to be part of a rhetorical question...

...Few of the black students quoted in newspaper stories displayed any interest in what Lawrence meant to say, or the context of his remarks, or his record, except to disparage it...

...It noted that compared with other members of the Association of American Universities (AAU)—a group of 58 leading research universities, 29 of them state-assisted— Rutgers was first in African-American enrollment among the public members and first in the percentage of full-time black faculty...

...race relations, he named it An American Dilemma...

...The occasion was a meeting of some 30 people held at RU's Camden campus on November 11, 1994, to discuss a "post-tenure review" process the university is establishing...

...The very word "diversity" no longer stands for anything worth embracing...

...Still, it is a commitment Lawrence has enthusiastically honored...

...The recent effort to remove Rutgers President Francis L. Lawrence from office illustrates why political correctness has been called the enforcement arm of multiculturalism...

...Universities could relax their faculty standards, but the most competitive are the most reluctant to do that, hence the game of musical chairs...

...This appears to be untrue...

...Repeated invocations of his record, and repeated apologies by Lawrence, failed for several weeks to stop the cycle of heavily reported protests and denunciations...

...For although he is by no means a Leftist, he has supported various PC measures, among them efforts to ban "hate speech" through restrictive student codes...

...54 per cent of the black members and 56 per cent of Latinos in the class of 1990 had graduated by 1992 (the rate for whites was 76 per cent...

...On February 22 the Targum ran a plaintive editorial urging the United Student Coalition to continue going after Lawrence: "When students march down College Avenue and demand Lawrence's resignation, those who disagree ridicule their attempts...