Molly Ivins September 16

AUSTIN — We have some liberals behaving badly here, and we all need to straighten up, get a grip, take a deep breath and remember what the First Amendment is for. You will have noticed a slight shortage of those willing to defend to the death Professor Lino Graglia's right to make a horse's patoot of himself. This is a fairly standard fate for free speech in this country: We all believe in it — until it really, really hurts.

We could pass lightly over this ugly little flap by observing that if ol' Lino G. weren't free to say things that are demonstrably untrue, none of the rest of us would be free to point out that he has the I.Q. of a dust bunny. But it seems to me important also to acknowledge the pain that Graglia has caused. It is not as though we differ with him on a matter of tariffs or highway funding. Racism strikes to the heart of both justice and human dignity.

The University of Texas' Dean Michael Sharlot says he finds the situation comparable to the time the Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Ill., were forced to grant a permit to let Nazis march in their town. I sided with the First Amendment then, as I side with the First Amendment now, but it is only fair to recognize that free speech sometimes comes with a high price.

And it is precisely when the cost is high and the pain it can cause is keenly felt that we most need to defend freedom of speech. It is wrong, unbecoming and ultimately self-destructive for liberals to demand that Graglia be fired. Calling for his head doesn't help much, either.

If no other argument persuades our misbehaving liberal friends, there is always the old standby, self-interest. Anyone who knows Texas understands that when a college professor has gotten an entire community so riled up that people are demanding his resignation, nine out of 10 times, it's going to be because the professor has said something deemed leftist or socialist or communist. This just happens to be one of the 10th times. And how liberals and blacks and browns behave in this case is going to affect the other nine, as well.

For those of you who have missed the excitement, this all started last week when, at a news conference being held by an anti-affirmative-action student group, Graglia said: "Blacks and Mexican-Americans are not academically competitive with whites in selective institutions. It is the result primarily of cultural effects. They have a culture that seems not to encourage achievement. Failure is not looked upon with disgrace."

OK, so you can hear far rawer racism any day in any town in East Texas; it was still an inexcusably pejorative generalization for a law professor. We are entitled to expect better.

And no, I would not want to be a black or brown law student walking into Graglia's class, knowing the man thought I wasn't "competitive" before I'd ever opened my mouth.

But it wouldn't be the first time and it won't be the last that minority students have had to face that problem.

Just a few years ago, a woman walked into the contracts class at St. Mary's Law School in San Antonio (before Dean Barbara Aldave got there), and the professor announced, "I don't believe women should be lawyers or law students." Then he waited for her to burst into tears and leave. She didn't. She wound up graduating No. 2 in her class; No. 1 was also a woman.

Interim UT President Peter Flawn said, "I've never seen such a firestorm." It came, of course, because the UT campus has been in an uproar since the Hopwood decision, and it doesn't help that the folks who brought the Hopwood case were inspired by none other than Graglia, who has been writing against affirmative action for years now.

Graglia, as is his wont, went on to make a bad situation worse, telling the Austin American-Statesman: "I don't know that it's good for whites to be with the lower classes. I'm afraid it may actually have deleterious effects on their views because they will see people from situations of economic deprivation usually behave less attractively. ... They perform less well in school. They tend toward greater violent behavior." Speaking on behalf of white people, I'll put our lower classes up against theirs any time.

Graglia is a well-known right-winger and was considered for a federal judgeship during the Reagan years, but the American Bar Association gave him a negative rating. This came after the time Graglia told Austin residents that they didn't need to obey a busing order and after a flapette over the time Graglia used the word "pickaninny" during a lecture. Graglia said he did not know the word had racist connotations. Right. He later apologized to his class. He was also considered by the Reagan administration for the top civil-rights job at the Justice Department. That Reagan — what a sense of humor he had.

Graglia also told the American-Statesman that he got into Columbia Law School "not because I knew anyone there or because I had political or social connections. It was because I did well on the test. You can see why I might be sort of partial to that." Living proof that test scores alone are no indicator of great intelligence.

At the 1992 John Henry Faulk Conference on the First Amendment, Graglia trivialized the issue of free speech and said he would rather rely on the Texas Legislature to protect civil liberty than the Bill of Rights. Many members of the Legislature are now demanding that he resign and threatening to cut off money to the law school if he doesn't. Some of them have also threatened to abolish the tenure system that protects Graglia's right to say what he pleases. We all get to live and learn.

Graglia also said in '92 that the Bill of Rights is "no acme" of human achievement. I think he was wrong, and the proof is that the Bill of Rights protects Lino Graglia's right to be wrong, along with everyone else's.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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