By ROBERT HARDT Jr.

A Queens councilwoman
sparked an uproar in City
Hall yesterday — accusing
the head of the mayor's
City University task force
of “ethnic cleansing” for
recommending fewer reme-
dial programs at CUNY.

As former Yale Univer-
sity President Benno
Schmidt testified before the
City Council’s Committee
on Higher Education, panel
chairwoman Helen Mar-
shall told him: “In reading
this report, I get a feeling
of ethnic cleansing, all
right?”

Clearly angry, Schmidt
shot back: “You're wrong
Mrs, Marshall. Hey, look,
I'm not accusing you or the
people who disagree with
me of these provocative and
outrageous things. Do me a
favor, will you? Give me a
break.”

Schmidt's report, issued
earlier this month, called
for CUNY to scale back re-
medial pi is at its
four-year colleges as well
as “reinventing open ad-
missions.”

The report said remedia-
tion should be concentrated
in CUNY’s two-year schools
as well as using Hagin
companies outside the sys-
tem.

Marshall, a Democrat,
was not alone in throwi
the book at Schmidt an
Herman Badillo, another
CUNY task force member
who testified.

“There are too many
things in this 2 Sea that
are too offensive for me to
ignore,” said Councilman
Bill Perkins (D-Manhat-

NEW YORK POST, TUESDAY, JUNE 22, 1999

OUR SCHOOLS IN TURMOIL

CUNY task-force
chief accused of
‘ethnic cleansing’

tan).

“Perhaps most outrageous
are the racist stereotypes
and innuendoes that are
implied in this report.”

Reading from an appen-
dix to the report, Perkins
objected to a sentence that
noted that Asian and white
students in city public
schools tended to perform
better than black and His-
panic students.

“The way I read this is
that you are i
blacks and Hispanics,’
Perkins said.

“That's completely ab-
surd,” countered Schmidt.

Overall, Perkins said he
found “some very serious
racial overtones embedded
in this here report.”

“You're wrong about
that,” Schmidt snapped.

Perkins also rag he was
outraged that CUNY’s deci-
sion to start open admis-
sions in 1970 was described
in the appendix as “policy
by riot.”

Opening up CUNY to
anyone with a high-school
diploma was “part of the
civil-rights movement,”
Perkins maintained,

Asked by reporters later
about the “policy riot”
line, Schmidt said: “It’s not
my phrase. I wouldn't have

it but I think that
anybody who looks at the
history of CUNY in the late
"60s and early "70s would
probably say that’s pretty
much what happened.”

Reprehensible
thetoric / Editorial:
Page 34

Badillo, an adviser to
Mayor Giuliani who re-
cently was appointed chair-
man of the CUNY board of
trustees, said it was laugh-
able to label the report as
racist.

“This cannot be a racist
report because there is no
chance that anybody is pro-
posing importing whites
from anywhere else,” Ba-

FUROR: Councilwoman Helen Marshall's accusation
sparked an uproar.

NY Post: Michael Norcia

ec

TAKEN TO TASK: Task-force members Benno Schmidt (left) and Herman Badillo
confer at a hearing where they were ripped by council members.

NY. Post: Don Halasy