In Black America; Dean Edwin Dorn, LBJ School of Public Affairs

music From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. One of the really bits of good news is that we have people of all political persuasions, President Bush as well as President Clinton, now talking about the importance of public service.

As a matter of fact, President Bush is opening a new school, a public service, just a couple of hundred miles from here, and by doing that, I think he's saying, look, public service ain't just a democratic thing anymore than running a business, it's a republican thing, all of us need to worry about the quality of this nation's public business. Dr. Edwin Dorne, Dean and the JJJ Pickle Regions Chair in Public Affairs, the OVJ School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, Dorne is the first African-American to serve as Dean of the OVJ School. Established in 1970 to provide graduate training in public policy and administration, the school offers several degree programs at the master's level, as well as a doctoral program. His mission is to improve the quality of governance of public institutions by preparing graduate students for careers in government, organizing research

to promote effective public policy and management. It also provides continuing education for public service professionals. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of in Black America. On this week's program, Dr. Edwin Dorne, Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs in Black America. It's absolutely vital, as a matter of fact, that's what defines a school of public policy or public affairs. It's what distinguishes us from an academic department. We're not training people simply to read about government or to teach about government. We're actually teaching them to act in and on the public sector. That means hearing from people who have experience, hearing them talk about the way things really were one of the great popular courses here for a long time has been one that's offered jointly by retired Admiral Bob Inman and by Charles Walker, who as you may remember was very instrumental in crafting the tax cuts of the early Reagan years.

And they go before students and they talk about the way the world really works. Charles Walker focuses on how economic policy is shaped at the national level. Bob Inman talks about primarily about how national security policy is really shaped. But you have to have people like that practitioners who can help give life to the otherwise dry readings. Before accepting their responsibility as Dean of the LBJ School in August 1977, Dorne served four years as assistant secretary and then as undersecretary for defense for personnel and readiness. That capacity, he was a defense secretary's senior advisor on recruitment, training, pay and benefits for defense departments total workforce of more than three million people. Born in Crockett, Texas and raised in Houston, he is a 1967 graduate of the university with the degree in government. He later earned graduate

degrees in Indiana University and Yale University. He began his government service in 1977 as a special assistant to the secretary of health, education and welfare. Also, he was a senior staff member at the Brookings Institute and a deputy director for research at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Recently in Black America spoke with the LBJ School's new dean. I went to college in the 1960s and you'll recall that as a period when we had as a nation a great confidence in our ability to change the world, we were moved by a public spiritedness. Remember that era began with John Kennedy's famous inaugural speech. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. The nation was going through the civil rights movement and so there was a great deal of confidence and hope in the air and especially a belief that

government, especially the federal government needed to be used to solve the number of this nation's problems, civil rights problems, the problems of poverty and so on. I got caught up in that and I guess that's one of the reasons I majored in government at the university in the early 1960s which was just beginning to desegregate. The classrooms had been desegregated at the time I was here. We actually were campaigning to desegregate the dormitories as a matter of fact that was one of the first protest demonstrations I ever participated in and later participated in protest demonstrations to encourage the desegregation of UT and collegiate athletics. The university didn't have its first black football player for example until a couple of years after I graduated in the late 1960s. Yale of course, so at the time the university was between 25 and 30,000 students and if I

recall correctly there were perhaps two to 300 African-American students on campus. I don't know the number of Hispanics at the time. Today the university is close to 50,000 students has about 12,000 African-Americans on campus, perhaps three times that many Hispanics. So a lot has changed 30 years ago when I was an undergraduate here while we noticed African-Americans in Hispanics we paid virtually no attention to Asian-Americans or Indians and yet those groups are now very, very prominent among the student populations. So this is truly a very, very diverse university community and the university I guess is taking steps to address and to address that diversity. How did the appointment come about that brought you to the Defense Department? As I mentioned I first went to Washington to work in the Department of Health education

welfare that's a domestic agency and I was particularly interested in education policy at the time. I later worked in the newly established education department that was during the Carter administration. During the 1980s a period that a lot of Democrats in Washington called the Hiatus because it was a long period of Republican presidents. I worked for a series of think tanks initially at the Joint Center for Political Studies which is considered the premier black think tank in the United States and later at the Brookings Institution. Because of a series of circumstances when I arrived at the Joint Center in the 1981 I wound up doing some work on military manpower questions. This was of course the Reagan era defense was growing dramatically, defense spending was growing dramatically. We had great tensions with what was then the Soviet Union and the representation

of African Americans in the force also was growing dramatically. So there was a lot of interest in this question about the changing racial composition of the armed forces and that's what I began doing research on. I quickly began to understand that you couldn't that you couldn't fully appreciate military personnel issues. How many people we needed in the military how they were used and one unless one understood broader questions of defense policy. Why do we have a military of a certain size? How is it likely to be used in a conflict and what are the possibilities of conflict? So I began to look at defense policy rather than just military personnel issues. I even produced a very slim volume on arms control. Those experiences helped me build up a bit of a reputation

as a defense policy expert around Washington and one of the few African Americans outside the military who studied the military and studied defense policy. So when the Clinton administration came to town mine became one of the names thrown in the hopper as a candidate for a position in the defense department. As you know for any senior political job there are literally hundreds of candidates, dozens of them perfectly capable of doing a job. So my eventually getting the job I got which was as under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness was partly a matter of my personal credentials. It was partly a matter of the support I received from people such as

Vernon Jordan, one of the president's strong supporters and advisors who was running the transition team at the time. And it's just partly a question of circumstance. But I felt very fortunate to have been, to have survived if you will, a very vigorous screening process. Obviously honored that the president appointed me to that job and I hope I did him justice. I think we did some good things in defense when I was there and it's sort of interesting. One of the things, the first thing I did after I was nominated was pay a courtesy call on Colin Powell who was in his last six months as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And Colin as you know is a very direct, very blunt man. And he looked at me as I was sitting in his office in the Pentagon and he said, Ed,

you guys in the Clinton administration are inheriting the finest military force ever developed. And your main job is don't screw it up. I promised Colin I wouldn't and I think I kept that commitment as a matter of fact I talked with him a few weeks ago and he seemed quite pleased with the fact that we had maintained a very high quality military. And as you know from reading in the papers all the time, it is a very busy force. The contingency operations are keeping our troops running and they do us proud every day. One would hope that at that level of government color is not a factor in appreciating and accepting the analysis and suggestions for the good of America. I think that level of government, what wins arguments is the quality of the facts that you present, the vigorous with which you present them and the persistence with which you

pursue your agenda. Clearly, I don't think there is a place in America where we are not at least aware of color. The military is certainly not a colorblind institution, the highest political ranks in the defense department are certainly not colorblind. I may have done some things because of my background that another appointee would not have done. I launched a major survey on race relations in the military, for example, that might not have been done by somebody who came from a different background. I launched the first ever advertising campaign aimed at recruiting women into the all-volunteer force. Someone different may have chosen a different agenda. Coming here to University of Texas at Austin, being the first African-American

Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, where you sought out or did you particularly want to come back to University of Texas? I was very eager to come back. This is a really plumb job in American academic circles. The LBJ school is one of the best public policy schools in the country. I grew up here. My wife and I both are originally from Texas, so we both were eager to come home after being away for 30 years. Having arrived here, I have just been impressed or reminded of what a supportive and welcoming place this university and the Austin community can be. Let me tell you a little anecdote. I spoke a few weeks ago just at the opening of classes with one of the students

passing in the halls, happened to be a young African-American woman from New York City, and she'd been in town for a week or so going through orientation and the like, and she confessed that in her first week in Austin, she was absolutely terrified. Why were you terrified? I asked, and she said, because people speak to you on the street. She said, in New York, when people speak to you on the street, you think they're a little wacko or they're trying to pick you up. She says, here, people just kind of smile and speak. It took her a couple of weeks to get used to returning a greeting. I think now she's quite well adjusted and finds this a very congenial place to be. How do you think your experience internationally and also on the government level

will assist you in bringing the LBJ school into the next millennial? Well, first, of course, it's already a very, very strong institution. It's especially strong in state and local politics. As you mentioned, much of my experience is a national policy areas, and so that's one of the things that I'd like to bring or focus on a little bit more national policy issues, whether it's education, policy, health care, policy, or foreign policy questions and defense policy, where I've also had some experience and an increasingly interdependent world where what happens in Austin is affected by what happens in Tokyo. The state of this economy is influenced by what happens in the currency markets of Europe. We have to pay attention to what's happening in our nation's capital and

in capitals around the world. We have to pay attention to national security. Why? Well, one reason is that the American taxpayers are spending $250 billion a year on the military. I think they have an obligation as citizens to know how that money is being spent and to assure themselves that it's being spent wisely. We have tens of thousands of people every day operating in harm's way around the world, our brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. We as a people have an interest in what's happening to them. I hope the LBJ school can help answer some of those questions. How is our policy toward the rest of the world going to be shaped in the post-code world world? How ought our military look in the post-code world? How to what extent are we to use Colin Powell's words to what extent is the United States going to be the world's 9-1-1 number?

Are you working on any publications presently or will be throughout the year? As you know, I haven't been in a university setting for some years now and so my first job is to understand how this university operates and understand the day-to-day responsibilities of a dean. So that's what I'm focusing on this year. I'm not teaching. I'm not doing any writing except for very short pieces. Just a week or so ago, for example, I did a short op-ed piece for the Austin American Statesman. I may do those short takes, but I don't have a major piece of writing in mind. Do you find people of color understanding the importance of attending an LBJ school of public affairs? I think so and we're going to do our best to help people of all colors, all backgrounds understand the role of a school of public affairs.

We can argue Democrats and Republicans conservative and liberals over what the role of government should be, whether it should expand or contract. But I think we all, if we're reasonable, recognize that we're going to have a government that, if we're going to have one, it should operate efficiently and the only way to get it to operate efficiently is to have well-trained people in it. One of this school's major missions is to prepare people to do government well. That's not all we prepare people for. In fact, only about half of our people go into government service, the remainder go into the private sector, or into nonprofit organizations like foundations or religious organizations that render social service. But our main responsibility is to produce people who can help shape this nation's public policy landscape over the next few

decades. I'm glad you robbed a point about government service. Our best minds and thinkers still considering to some extent to give their time and effort for government service, is there still, or is there, in your opinion, some sort of cynicism towards working for government? Over the past 20 years, we've experienced a lot of bureaucrat bashing. Some of it coming from the highest levels of political leadership in Washington. That's been unfortunate because it may have discouraged some of the best people from going into government. And it has, I think, increased public cynicism or skepticism. But one of the really bits of good news is that we have people of all political persuasions, President Bush, as well as President Clinton, now talking about

the importance of public service. As a matter of fact, President Bush is opening a new school, the Bush School of Public Service just a couple of hundred miles from here. And by doing that, I think he's saying, look, public service ain't just a democratic thing anymore than running a business, is a Republican thing. All of us need to worry about the quality of this nation's public business. Recently, the LBJ School has received an endowment in the name of Barbara Jordan. How will that assist you in your mandate as dean here at UT? Barbara became known at this university for, especially for her interest in what's called ethics in government. And that endowed chair will enable another scholar to carry on that tradition, a concern for ethics in government for honesty in public service, as well as responsiveness in public

service. I must say that Barbara's untimely death has left a great sadness across this community, and I'm sure across the nation because she was much admired as a teacher and as a leader. Here at the LBJ School, of course, there's the academic portion, but you all bring in a lot of the policy makers that are making policy today. How important is that for the young people here at the schools to give both the academic portion of public policy, but also to hear from those that are making those policies that they read about? It's absolutely vital, as a matter of fact, that's what defines a school of public policy or public affairs. It's what distinguishes us from an academic department. We're not training people simply to read about government or to teach about government. We're actually teaching them to act in and on the public sector. That means hearing from people who have experience, hearing

them talk about the way things really work. One of the great popular courses here for a long time has been one that's offered jointly by retired Admiral Bob Inman and by Charles Walker, who, as you may remember, was very instrumental in crafting the tax cuts of the early Reagan years. And they go before students and they talk about the way the world really works. Charles Walker focuses on how economic policy is shaped at the national level. Bob Inman talks about primarily about how national security policy is really shaped. But you have to have people like that, practitioners who can help give life to the otherwise dry readings. Having lived abroad, how does the rest of the world view the United States?

I've been abroad at various times during the past 30 years, clearly during the Vietnam period, large numbers of people abroad, saw the United States as overbearing, as pursuing an unnecessary conflict. But our involvement in some recent conflicts, the effort to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, for example, the humanitarian missions in Somalia and Rwanda and in Haiti, have increased the world's admiration for the United States. It's interesting, we are the only nation that has the resources to launch some of those humanitarian operations. But even more importantly, I think the world realizes that we are the only nation who spirit is generous enough

to undertake them. That's what separates us from much of the rest of the world. I think other nations probably could have gotten together and done the Rwanda Mission, for example, the mission which was carried out by our military and helped save tens of thousands of lives. But the United States did it. We had the will to do it. That I think speaks volumes, not just about our wonderful military capability and the great training of military personnel. I think it speaks volumes about the underlying generous spirit of the American people. And that I think is what is increasing admiration for the United States around the world. Can you legislate policy that's particularly troubling for the African community, Black and Black

crime, teen pregnancy, low self-esteem, figuring that they're already doomed at a young age and not being able to succeed in this society? You can legislate behavior. You can't legislate attitudes. And influencing attitudes is an extraordinarily complicated business. We do not know very well how to do it. We do know that people learn by example that their attitudes are formed by example. And what we have had in many, many communities over the past few decades is a deteriorating cycle. Dr. Erwin Dorne, Dean, LBJ School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin.

If you have a question or comment or suggestions as to future in Black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer David Alvarez, I'm Johnny Johansson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America cassettes. Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America cassettes, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm Johnny Johansson, Jr. Join me this week on in Black America.

The public's support for government depends on the confidence and responsiveness and the integrity of the individual public service. Dr. Edwin Dorne, Dean of the OBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, this week on in Black America.