Some of you will recall Richard Lamm as the liberal Democratic governor of Colorado for twelve years. You may not know — I didn’t — that he was a professor at the University of Denver before his tenure as governor, and he has been a full professor there ever since.
EducationNation has just reprinted a short article by Lamm that the University of Denver refused to publish in one of its publications, deeming it “too controversial.” (Thanks to reader Garrick Williams for the reference.) It was published in Academic Questions (Fall 2004), a publication of the National Association of Scholars, but I haven’t found it online. With a Hat Tip to EducationNation, I’m reprinting it here.
Too Controversial for the University of Denver
Richard D. Lamm
Academic Questions, Fall 2004
I started teaching at the University of Denver in 1969 and, except for serving as Colorado s governor for 12 years, have been there continuously. I became a full tenured professor in 1973.
Some time ago I submitted the attached article, Two Wands, to The Source, the university newspaper run by our Vice Chancellor for Communications. The article was in response to a particularly offensive screed on white racism by one of our affirmative action officials. I felt it should not go unanswered.
The Source is run by the administration, separate from our student newspaper. To my amazement, the article was turned down as too controversial. I protested to no avail. So I confidentially went to our provost to get the decision reversed, and was doubly shocked when he agreed with the vice chancellor that the article was too controversial. Next stop was the chancellor of the university, who has been a friend for 25 years. Ever the diplomat, he said he did not think of it as censorship and also refused to reverse the decision. I argued at length about academic freedom and that controversy was what universities were all about.
I recounted that I had attended the University of Wisconsin when Joseph McCarthy was senator and observed first-hand courageous academic administrators standing up to the power of the U.S. Senate, time after time risking their careers to protect what is the most basic freedom on a university campus. I reminded him that I come out of the liberal wing of the Democratic party and my first job out of law school was as a civil rights attorney. Our family marched in Selma. Certainly this was a viewpoint that deserved to be heard.
I argued and argued to no avail.
Is there a liberal orthodoxy at the University of Denver that threatens academic freedom? I append the letter below. You be the judge.
Two Wands
Richard D. Lamm
Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues
Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettoes and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning, and ambition. But, alas, you can t wave both wands. Only one.
Which would you choose? I understand that many would love to wave both wands; no one can easily refuse the chance to erase racism and discrimination. But I suggest that the best wand for the society and for those who live in the ghettoes and barrios would be the second wand.
This metaphor is important in correctly diagnosing one of the most significant problems facing contemporary America: the large economic, education and employment gap between Black/Hispanic America and White/Asian America. The problems of crime, educational failure, drugs, gangs, teenage pregnancy, and unemployment that burden certain groups threaten our collective future. They form a nation-threatening social pathology that must be addressed in broader terms than we have done to date.
Most discussion of minority failure blames racism and discrimination. I m an old civil rights lawyer and such racism and discrimination clearly still exists. But the problem is, I fear, deeper than the current dialogue. We need to think honestly about these problems with new sophistication. One of these new areas is to recognize that increasingly scholars are saying culture matters.
I m impressed, for instance, that minorities that have been discriminated against earn the highest family incomes in America. Japanese Americans, Jews, Chinese Americans, and Korean Americans all out-earn white Americans by substantial margins and all have faced discrimination and racism. We put Japanese Americans in camps 60 years ago and confiscated much of their property. Yet today they out-earn all other demographic groups. Discrimination and racism are social cancers and can never be justified but it is enlightening that, for these groups, they were a hurdle, not a barrier to success.
The Italians, the Irish, the people from the Balkans America has viewed all these groups and many more with hostility and suspicion, yet all have integrated and succeeded. Hispanic organizations excuse their failure rates solely in terms of discrimination by white America and object vociferously when former Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos observes that Hispanic parents don t take enough interest in education. But Cuban Americans have come to America and succeeded brilliantly. Do we discriminate against Hispanics from Mexico but not Hispanics from Cuba?
I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress delayed gratification, education, hard work, success and ambition are those groups that succeed in America regardless of discrimination. I further suggest that, even if discrimination was removed, other groups would still have massive problems until they develop the traits that lead to success. Asian and Jewish children do twice as much homework as Black and Hispanic students, and get twice as good grades. Why should we be surprised?
A problem well defined is a problem half-solved. We must recognize that all the civil rights laws in the world are not going to solve the problem of minority failure. Ultimately Blacks and Hispanics are going to have to see that the solution is largely in their own hands. Lionel Sosa, one of America s leading Hispanic businessmen, in his book The Americano Dream, titles his first chapter Escaping the Cultural Shackles.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan has insightfully observed, the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
Thus, morally, I would want badly to wave both wands; if I had to choose, I would wave the second wand. A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass.
If there were more liberals like Lamm, there wouldn’t be so many conservatives.
This Works
Discriminations reproduces a fine column by former Democrat Governor Richard Lamm about how any group can
To see how UNCONTROVERSIAL this is, consider that it could have been written by Bill Cosby.
Well, Dom, Bill Cosby has said things in the same vein, and I suspect would agree with Lamm’s article. And when Bill Cosby said it, it generated a lot of controversy.
What is very unfortunate about the situation is that Lamm and Cosby’s statements very likely contain a great deal of truth. While I cannot claim to be an expert on black and Hispanic culture, it seems only logical that there is some sort of cultural component to the problems that face these groups, a cultural component that runs deeper than racial discrimination by whites. What other explanation can there be for the success of Japanese Americans, who were placed in internment camps 80 years after the black slaves of the South were freed? How else can you explain the success of many Cuban Americans, many of whom had to float across from Cuba on rafts and then faced signs like “No dogs or Cubans allowed”? Another aspect which Lamm missed but seems equally valid is the huge gender gap between male and female black students in college. I think here at Michigan something like 66% of black students are women, and this number is reasonably representative of the numbers at a lot of schools. By normal PC convention, the black women should be placed at a double disadvantage, since they are black AND women, the two favorite groups for white men to oppress. By the logic of the race preferences supporters, none of these groups- black women, Japanese Americans, Cuban Americans, or Jews- should be demonstrating the sort of success that they are. But they are…. why?
The point is, the problems of America’s underrepresented minorities can’t be explained away by evil white men discriminating against them. Is white racism still a problem? Yes, but if some groups can overcome it, why can’t others?
I can certainly see why this issue raises “controversy”. Lamm’s article uses the phrase “minority failure”, and we certainly can’t suggest that any failure on the part of a minority might be partially their own fault- all blame must rest squarely on the shoulders of the white oppressor. He also implies that the work ethic of certain minorities must be better than others, which again flies in the face of PC logic that all racial groups are equal, except for the evil whites who oppress the other groups and are therefore all, every single one, at a tremendous advantage over every person of any other color.
What is most disturbing about this situation is that Lamm and Cosby are being reviled for speaking a viewpoint that may have a lot of value. Because if they are right and we continue to ignore them, the blacks and Hispanics of this country will never succeed on the same level as other groups because we will have ignored a primary reason for their initial failure. This will hurt everyone by continuing to damage the economy, keeping many inner cities poor, and harming innocent whites through misguided measures like racial preferences.
In many respects, this is similar to the comments made by Harvard’s Larry Summers regarding women in science and engineering. What he said was certainly politically incorrect, but we are hurting ourselves by dismissing it offhand. For example, what if we find that male and female brains are wired such that it makes it easier for men to learn math and science with today’s teaching methods? Maybe we could find teaching methods that take adavantage of the wiring of the female brain, and we’d all be better off by making it easier for people to learn and bringing more minds and perspectives into the scientific fields. We will never achieve this benefit, however, if we refuse to even accept the mere possibility that the genetic makeup of men and women is a cause of the disparity between men and women in the scientific fields.
It is certainly possible for black and Hispanic men and women to succeed in this country, because many do. It’s time we took a good hard look at why so many don’t, and I strongly suspect that the answer runs deeper than “blame whitey”. It might not be PC, but if we don’t find the cause of the problem, how can we ever expect to solve it?
Now there is a liberal one can love. Not because (as many cocoon liberals would immediately think) he is supporting, sort of, what might be called the current conservative line on AA. But first, and foremost, because he is thinking and speaking beyond the liberal box. I don
Nice point notherbob2. Maybe Lamm is right, maybe he’s not… but can we afford to risk ignoring him simply for the sake of political correctness?
Not to rain on the “Lamm love-in”, but I too find some problems with his thesis.
>>> m impressed, for instance, that minorities that have been discriminated against earn the highest family incomes in America. Japanese Americans, Jews, Chinese Americans, and Korean Americans all out-earn white Americans by substantial margins and all have faced discrimination and racism.”
This is a misleading statement, with far too many sweeping generalizations. Lamm differentiates “Jews” from “white Americans”, when the reality is that the vast majority of Jews in America are indeed white.
Lamm writes:
>>>I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress delayed gratification, education, hard work, success and ambition are those groups that succeed in America regardless of discrimination. I further suggest that, even if discrimination was removed, other groups would still have massive problems until they develop the traits that lead to success. Asian and Jewish children do twice as much homework as Black and Hispanic students, and get twice as good grades. Why should we be surprised?”
I disagree in part. I don’t deny that “hard work” is a requirement, however, slaves worked “hard”, didn’t they? Hard work without access to advancement is Sisyphean. Lamm is also basing this upon minority groups that, for the most part, applied economic collectivism inspite of living in the larger American society.
>>>A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass.”
It depends what your goals are. If your goal is to acheive individual “success”, than by all means, follow this ideology. If your goal is to achieve GROUP success, then I tend to agree with Dr. Claud Anderson, of Powernomics, over Lamm.
>>>Blacks approach economic development by looking at education first, then politics, and then economics,
I’m a faculty member at the University of Denver. Governor Lamm sought to publish his essay in an inappropriate place. The Source is an all-campus newsletter reporting campus activities, events, and soft, “feel good” news. The Source doesn’t publish, and it’s not the appropriate place for publishing, substantive essays on social issues (controversial or otherwise). Thus, there’s no controversy here, and certainly no infringement of Governor Lamm’s academic freedom. There
I’m a faculty member at the University of Denver. Governor Lamm sought to publish his essay in an inappropriate place. The Source is an all-campus newsletter reporting campus activities, events, and soft, “feel good” news. The Source doesn’t publish, and it’s not the appropriate place for publishing, substantive essays on social issues (controversial or otherwise). Thus, there’s no controversy here, and certainly no infringement of Governor Lamm’s academic freedom. There