Having done four years of graduate work at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, I was distressed to learn that there, as elsewhere, a few radical activists can rout a weak administration and faculty by crying “racism.” Last February a special Task Force on Race Relations released a report to justify the subordination of education to racial politics at UT-K. The task force had been appointed by Chancellor Jack Reese at the request of the UT Commission for Blacks. In early May, Reese accepted virtually all of the report’s 22 recommendations.

,p>The report claimed to find “lingering vestiges of racism” at UT-K, yet it had to look hard to find any evidence. The only campus incident cited was the yelling of “racial slurs” by fraternity members at a black student for repeatedly taking a shortcut through their hedge and across their lawn. Unfortunately, you can hear enough profanity and slurs on any campus, used by members of all races and sexes. Had the trespasser been white, curses just as insulting would have been found and used, for it was the act, not the actor, that triggered the outrage.

 

The report branded white students “apathetic” as well as “hostile” to blacks—thus classifying as racist the vast majority of whites who accept blacks without a second thought. Mere acceptance does not exhibit sufficient “sensitivity”: whites must take “affirmative action” to prove that they no longer harbor racist thoughts.

The faculty was found to be just as guilty. The task force had to find some way to explain why black students on average have lower grades than whites. Alleging a racist plot is easier than admitting the dismal condition of urban schools, the sociopathic street culture, or the high incidence of broken homes in the black community—all factors affecting academic performance long before college is reached.

Among the proposals the chancellor accepted are “sensitivity training programs” to educate the public to the special needs of blacks—the public in this case being all white students and their parents, the faculty and staff, and businessmen and community leaders of Knoxville. These propaganda exercises will be put together by the director of Affirmative Action, the Commission for Blacks, and the Black Faculty and Staff Association. Reese also endorsed new efforts to improve the attitudes of the faculty toward black students. Under pressure from the administration, the faculty senate had already agreed to begin the curious task of holding discussions to “confront” their alleged “insensitivity” towards minorities.

Reese declined to call for mandatory courses in Afro-American studies, as the task force demanded. Since UT-K already has a battery of such courses and since students need only a total of six courses from history, geography, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, religion, and philosophy, obviously a mandatory minority culture course would leave them shortchanged.

But he did endorse the interesting demand that “all University courses reflect the multiracial and multicultural character of American society.” Trying to stake out a middle ground between the “rigid dichotomy” he saw in the debate over the Western civilization course at Stanford, Reese announced that UT-K would be “dedicated to intellectual and cultural diversity,” which means that students will find the already meager ration of their own heritage further diluted in the new “melting pot” of global relativism.

To his credit, the chancellor refused the task force requests for the creation of a vice-chancellor for minority affairs and a UT Civil Rights Commission, noting that the university already had a Commission for Blacks, a Commission for Women, and an Adaptive Living Committee. But the bureaucracy will continue to bloat. The task force encouraged black students to file complaints against white students and professors through the campus Ombudsman and Affirmative Action offices—something the chancellor said the university would promote. Reese also saw a “great deal of merit” to establishing one more radical watchdog: the Race Relations Institute that the task force had asked for. Reese thought that such an institute could “set a new tone for national discussion” and “would be a powerful symbol for the University.”

It is clear from these actions that the aim of the university is not to create a color-blind environment, but to resurrect racism by pushing race and raceconsciousness as the dominant factor in educational policy.

When, for instance, the UT-K political science department picked a woman scholar of national reputation as its new chairperson, the choice was rejected by the administration. The nominee was white. The selection committee was taken away from political science and placed under a black activist professor from another department; the new committee’s choice of a black poli-sci chairman was accepted by the administration without question. According to faculty sources, this same “reverse discrimination” has been followed in other departments and at the law school. And now the chancellor has accepted the report’s recommendation for an even stronger bias in hiring.

The report also called for “special attention” to be paid “to all University awards, both honorary and achievement-based” regarding the “presence and participation of blacks.” Although protesting that UT-K was already “sensitive” to this, Reese accepted the recommendation with a pledge to show even more “sensitivity” in the future. The task force then recommended that administrative and academic personnel be evaluated for promotion and tenure according to how well they implement these “affirmative action” programs—a policy that many faculty members believe has been administration practice for several years. As a final measure, Reese said he will ask the Commission for Blacks to make “at least” an annual evaluation of how the university is doing meeting its objectives.

Any notion of rewarding people on the basis of merit alone has been abandoned. Michael Harris, a black activist professor of religious studies, testified before the task force on October 28, 1987, “So when you see the word ‘qualifications’ used, remember this is the new code-word for whites.” The administration has conceded this premise. Throwing out the pursuit of individual excellence, it is dividing the campus into competing groups. Appointments, awards, promotions, grades, and money are to be based on membership in a particular ethnic group. Blacks will not only gain higher pay and benefits, faster promotion and tenure as a result of affirmative action, but radical blacks will obtain institutional benediction for their preaching on the entire range of political issues.