May 27, 1968
Page 15103
THE URBAN INSTITUTE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, when President Johnson announced the Board of Trustees for the new Urban Institute, he gave notice that the Nation was mobilizing its best intellectual resources to help find solutions to the grave problems that beset our cities. The uniformly high caliber of the men who will serve on the Board assures that a wide range of talent and competence will be brought to bear on our highest priority social problem.
Last December the President asked seven distinguished citizens to resolve basic issues concerning the role of the Institute to draft and file legal documents, incorporate the Institute as a private, nonprofit corporation, select a prestigious Board of Trustees, and recommend the best qualified man available for president.
The panel has completed its job, and the Institute has begun to work. The Board of Trustees is chaired by Arjay Miller, vice chairman of the Ford Motor Co. William Gorham, former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, was chosen by the Board to serve as president of the Institute. He formerly served with the Rand Corp., and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense. He has had long experience in problem solving analysis and methods. In addition to Mr. Miller and Mr. Gorham the Board includes:
William Friday, president of the University of North Carolina;
Eugene C. Fubini, vice president, International Business Machines, Inc.;
William H. Hastie, judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit;
Edgar F. Kaiser, chairman, Kaiser Industries, Inc.;
Edward F. Levi, president, the University of Chicago;
Baylass A. Manning, dean, Stanford University School of Law;
Stanley Marcus, president, Neiman Marcus;
Robert S. McNamara, president, the World Bank;
J. Irwin Miller, chairman, Cummins Engine Co.;
Charles L. Schultze, senior fellow, the Brookings Institution;
Leon H. Sullivan, chairman, Opportunities Industrialization Center, Philadelphia;
Cyrus R. Vance, partner, law firm of Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett of New York; and
Whitney M. Young, Jr., executive director, National Urban League.
There is common agreement that our large cities face two critical problems. The first grows out of sheer size. The second problem concerns the urban poor.
During the last several decades we have seen the movement of the affluent and middle-income people to the suburbs and their replacement by the poor who have crowded into our dense neighborhoods. Much of the inner city population is poorly educated, ill housed, inadequately served by outmoded health and recreational facilities, jobless or underemployed, alienated and hopeless. The fact that most are Negro or Puerto Rican heightens their bitterness and their deep feeling of isolation from American life.
Last year's civil disorders, and the more recent ones, are the tragic evidence of the alienation of the urban poor.
Faced with immediate crises and the need to act, public agencies are unable to devote time and resources to careful studies of urban problems and their causes and solutions, or to develop effective strategies. Ad hoc committees and special task forces are helpful with specific problems, but are too short lived to carry out intensive studies.
Mr. President, the Urban Institute will be permanent. It will mass high quality talent for thorough and continuing studies of city problems. It will build on existing knowledge and to add to our understanding of urban concerns by supplying useful data and exploring the complex relationships between problems and programs. It will devise coordinated plans for attacking the urban dilemma. The Institute will work with individual cities in establishing cooperative centers where its staff can help city officials in attacking local problems.
We have launched many programs to combat urban blight and human misery. The Urban Institute will undertake continuing, comprehensive and independent evaluation of Federal, local, and private programs to assure that they are being carried out effectively, that they can build on and profit from existing experience, and that they contribute systematically to a growing fund of knowledge on how to improve the quality of urban life.
The Urban Institute is no substitute for more direct efforts. The obvious needs of the cities for better jobs, education, housing, and health require immediate action. What the Institute can do is provide a continuing, independent resource for evaluating action programs to assure that public and private funds go into programs that show results. It can build a better foundation for new action efforts.
Mr. President, I welcome the establishment of the Urban Institute.