Word: klitgaard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...they are undoubtedly as horrified as anyone. But they can and should do more to counteract the damaging fears such incidents provoke. If the University were more enthusiastic, more cooperative, and more speedy in its development of a Third World Center; if President Bok and other leaders denounced the Klitgaard report, which insensitively cast doubt on Black students' academic abilities; if College administrators moved faster to implement the recommendations of last year's race relations report; and if Harvard's leaders made it clear that student pressure isn't the only way to budge them to take steps...
Amid the moral uproar surrounding the Klitgaard report, the Crimson has provided us with an article that surely dwarfs Klitgaard in arrogance, specious argument, and even racism--Selwyn Cudjoe's "Ideological Trick-Bag." This quasi-Marxist analysis pales in comparison with the sober and informed exchange between Carl Gershman and Dr. Kenneth Clark it sets out to condemn...
...begin with, we must infer that The Crimson, having published Mr. Cudjoe's piece, is no mere bourgeois "ideological apparatus" seeking "to make the natives fight among themselves," unlike the New York Times and the rest of "The Press." Mr. Cudjoe claims that Gershman and Klitgaard simply perpetrate "another ideological onslaught ... against Black America, the activities of the Ku Klux Klan being the more vulgar manifestation of the same phenomenon." He further accuses them of "pseudo-intellectualism and militant racist assumptions." But where is the Klan-like racism in the Klitgaard report? In pointing out test score discrepancies? If there...
...Gershman merits this abuse still less than Klitgaard. His basic claim is that the problem of the permanent Black underclass, a problem of great importance to the "future of America as a viable urban civilization," will not be solved simply by affirmative action programs and similar measures because racism is no longer the primary obstacle. One may disagree with his argument, as does Dr. Clark, but it is an outrageous distortion to impute to Gershman the view that the Black bourgeoisie is the "CAUSE OF" and bears the "RESPONSIBILITY FOR" the plight of the Black underclass...
...Cudjoe concludes by accusing Klitgaard of trying "to delegitimize the value of the achievements of young Black scholars." Mr. Cudjoe's own intolerant and ill-conceived analysis "delegitimizes" itself, but perhaps this is of minor importance to someone who is primarily committed to "revolutionary discourse" and "practice," and who was previously quoted in The Crimson as saying that "physical violence is imminent" if President Bok does not respond quickly to student demands regarding the Klitgaard report. I hope members of the Harvard community of all races and classes can join me in affirming that confused indignation is no substitute...