Affirmative Action Debate Will Divide Nation, Educator Says

The former president of Howard University, one of the nation’s foremost black colleges, warned his fellow higher education administrators Monday to prepare for a contentious debate over affirmative action that could split America “right down the middle.”

Speaking at the annual American Council on Education conference here, Franklyn G. Jenifer recalled the furor that erupted after Khallid Abdul Muhammad, a former aide to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, delivered an anti-Semitic speech at Howard University last spring.

As divisive as Muhammad’s speech was, Jenifer said, it was a minor incident compared to the arguments that are beginning to be waged in California and across the nation over race- and gender-based preferences in college admissions and hiring.

“I will tell you--remember hearing it here: In two years, it’s going to be hell on your campuses on this issue,” said Jenifer, who left Howard last year to become president of the University of Texas at Dallas.

“It won’t just be . . . a few places. It will be every major campus that has significant proportions of minority students who were admitted with different standards of admission or (whose) average SAT scores . . . or rank in the class is lower than the majority.”

Jenifer described recent student protests over a racially charged remark made by Rutgers University President Francis L. Lawrence as “just a taste of what can happen.” Lawrence has apologized for a reference he made in November linking “genetic, hereditary background” to performance on aptitude tests.

“You’ve seen the black students at Rutgers University just recently?” Jenifer asked, referring to protests that forced cancellation of a basketball game and disrupted campus activities.

“You let there be a broad attack on their presence on those campuses, and (if) we as a community have to debate in open forum the value of SAT scores, “The (Bell) Curve” and all of those other kinds of messages . . . it’ll make Khallid Muhammad and these little things we’re talking about now look like small change when America splits right down the middle.”

The theme for this year’s conference of the American Council on Education, which represents about 1,900 independent and publicly funded schools, is “Building Communities of Civility and Respect.”

Jenifer’s remarks came during a panel entitled “Hate Speech on Campus: A Leadership Issue.”