Smith President To Be Featured In National Affirmative Action Broadcast

"Beyond Black and White" set to air on PBS stations nationwide at 10 p.m. Tuesday, March 23

Smith College President Ruth Simmons and affirmative action foe Ward Connerly playing the role of parents to a college-aged daughter is but one example of the unusual ways that "Beyond Black and White: Affirmative Action in America" (10 p.m., March 23, PBS) explores the controversial and emotional topic of racial preferences.

Simmons, Connerly

The program, a production of the Fred Friendly Seminars of the Columbia University School of Journalism, brings together a remarkably diverse group of prominent personalities, including conservative columnist Ann Coulter, California Congressman Frank Riggs, and Director of White House Communications Ann Lewis, to debate whether affirmative action is, as supporters claim, an essential remedy to past disenfranchisement or, in the view of detractors, untenable reverse discrimination.

In the tradition of the Seminars, the participants role-play a hypothetical situation. In this case, a minority student has gained admission to a university over a white student with stronger academic credentials. As the student's "mother," Simmons supports the use of a racial "plus-factor" in admission. To her, racial diversity makes an essential contribution to the educational experience in a racially diverse nation. As the "father," however, Connerly, a University of California regent and a driving force behind that state's Proposition 209 movement, disagrees. He argues that affirmative action policies foster negative assumptions about the merits and qualifications of minorities who reach positions of power.

The complexities of the affirmative action debate are further illustrated through the viewpoints of other panelists, who urge the group to consider not only race but socioeconomic status; not only schools and colleges but workplaces; and whether the experience of the military can inform private-sector efforts to promote diversity.

Fred Friendly, the former president of CBS News and a pioneer of television journalism, launched the first seminars in 1984. Past programs have examined the U.S. constitution, death and dying, free speech and speech codes, the military and the news media, and social security. Friendly died in 1998; his widow, Ruth W. Friendly, who graduated from Smith in 1945, continues to serve as a senior editorial advisor to the project.