"It is argued that detachment and objectivity are required for the discovery of truth. BUT WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A SOULLESS TRUTH? Does not truth require meaning? And does not meaning require a context of values? Is there any meaning or relevant truth without comittment? HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO STUDY A SLUM OBJECTIVELY ? What kind of human being can remain detached as he watches the dehumanization of other human beings? Why would one want to study a sick child except to make him well?"

Such is the passion and ethos that guides the Center we are founding named after Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. I'd like to welcome you to the Social Responsibility in Research Forum. While we here at UIC have had a year long ordeal confronting the problems of making sure human subjects are not harmed in research, this falls short of the meaning of social responsibility in research we are celebrating today. There is this idea, that research has an obligation beyond the obligation to professional standards and the academy, beyond providing informed consent and doing no harm to "human subjects." Research has a social responsibility, a responsibility to understand there are consqeuences to doing research that go beyond helping or hurting an individual.

Our program is aimed at presenting two speakers, one from the community asking "what the community wants" from the university. The other from the academy, who is an example of the kind of high quality work that can be done with the community involved and award.

I began my introductory remarks with a quote from Kenneth Clark, and before I begin the final part of the program, I'd like to read from another social scientists, one that I used in People & Folks, and that also exemplifies the spirit our efforts.

"Most importantly, unless community participants are actively involved in both the research and its uses, as we have done in this study, both the research and its ultimate uses tend to be highly suspect. While this can be termed politicization, the alternative is not very pleasant either. Unless the community is involved, so-called objective research will almost inevitably be politicized beyond the researchers control."

These are Joan Moore's words from her first book, Homeboys, and they have guided my research since I first read them. I then had the high honor of being mentored by Dr. Moore, being held to high standards while remaining engaged in the struggle to advance the interests of those on the bottom rungs of society.

It is with great humility and honor, that I present the first Kenneth B. Clark Award for Social Responsibility in Research to a woman whose life and work exemplifies the spirit of Dr. Clark: Joan W. Moore.

Before we begin to discuss the work of the Clark Center, and this part of the program is organized for your participation, I'd like to tell you a bit about Kenneth Clark and why we named this center after him.

Kenneth B. Clark is a social psychologist whose work was the cornerstone of the NAACP's introduction of social science literature in Brown vs the Board of Education. His "doll studies" were part of the demonstration that social arrangements and culture can have a destructive effect on human beings, not different, but destructive, for not the least reason is that the social arrangements and culture are imposed upon a group despite their will. Later, Dr. Clark founded HARYOU, or the Harlem Youth Organization, dedicated to making a better life for black youth and overcoming the pathology of the ghetto. Dr. Clark's methods were of "involved observation" or active involvement of social scientists in the struggle to destroy the psychological and physical ghettoes which mar and mark modern life. He said:

He continued:

"The appropriate technology of serious and relevant social science would have as its prime goal helping society move toward humanity and justice with minimum irrationality, instability , and cruelty. If social science and social technology cannot help achieve these goals then they will be ignored or relegated to the level of irrelevance, while more serious men seek these goals through trial and error or through the crass exercise of power."

Dr. Clark was also a proponent of field work, of direct observation of the lives those we study and suspicious of statistics which too often mislead rather than lead. In one of his most famous sayings, he said

"Throughout my involvement in the study of the ghetto, in the collection of the data about Harlem, in my exposure to currents and cross currents of the community, it became increasingly clear to me that what are generally labeled as the facts of the ghetto are not necessarily synonymous with the truth of the ghetto. In fact, there are times when one feels that "facts" tend to obscure truth."

We are founding the Kenneth B. Clark Center for the Study of Violence today by rejecting two more standard notions of research. The first, which Dr. Clark called "social science mercenaries" who got their big chance in, what he bitingly called "the Moynihan era," is research done by those who do the bidding of the powerful. Social scientists are doing what Gouldner called the "market research of the welfare state." But since the welfare state is becoming a thing of the past, what we increasingly see, especially in our department, is research done at the behest of the Justice Department to help it carry out its war on drugs.

Despite all the "liberal" talk in Washington and the "good intentions" of criminal justice academics, the statisticians need to explain the number 2 million----- the number of people behind bars in the US. Kenneth Clark is undoubtedly appalled at the dance of death performed by social scientists begging for grants and other lucre handed out by Justice Department officials wanting to know how to better rationalize a system of utter irrationality and destruction of the human spirit. Enough of this, don't get me started. This is not a subject I can treat in a "detached" manner. While this kind of research is the main problem organizationally, theoretically it presents little challenge, and is often not defended at all.

The other notion of research is much older but yet much newer. It is the variant of truth for truth's sake, the escape of the academic into his or her tenured ivory castle. It is the idea that truth is possible without commitment, that objectivity requires disengagement and neutrality. While this idea today is promoted by the post modern set, it really is a very old tradition of thinking that the consequences of our our intellectual efforts are unimportant or irrelevant. Or as the folk singer Tom Lehrer sang about the father of America's guided missle program: "I just send them up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department said Werner von Braun." I think "where they come down" is our department.

This view, that our science can be done for its own sake or outside of any understanding of its uses , we may forget, was thoroughly shaken after World War II, when German scientists worked for Hitler to experiment on the best ways to commit genocide, then American scientists produced greatest weapon of mass destruction in the history of mankind, the atom bomb. A great outcry for social responsibility in research arose at that time, and then again in the turbulent sixties, as young people demanded universities act in the interests of the exploited and oppressed and not use "detachment" as an excuse for indifference. Dr. Clark said:

"Our colleges and universities have a long history of default on important moral issues. They have frequently tried to make a virtue of isolation from the problems of the marketplace and from the anguished yearnings of the derived and powerless people of our society."

Today, I want to use this time to begin a discussion of social responsibility in research, in not only what to do, but how to do it. As the information era begins, the university has even more importance in shaping the economy and culture of the future. The Clark Center sees that an opportunity exists here at UIC to combine our research with a program of development for poor, unwired, and segregated communities.

What I want to do is to briefly describe the three main activities of the Clark Center and open up the floor for comments, suggestions, and criticism."

Go to Dr. Moore's keynote address