Perkins Prize founder urges nominations, pushes goals

By Ed Hershey

How far have Cornell, higher education and the nation come in terms of race relations? Not far enough, says Cornell Trustee Thomas W. Jones '69, MRP '72, who has been grappling with the issue for more than 35 years.

Jones, chairman and CEO for Global Investment Management and the Private Banking Group at Citigroup, established and endowed Cornell's $5,000 James A. Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony. The deadline for nominations and applications for the seventh annual Perkins Prize is Friday, Feb. 23.

"We are really looking for people and programs that bring diverse ethnic groups together, that create opportunities to share experiences, to learn about each other, to being friends and colleagues as opposed to being separate communities that kind of pass by each other like ships in the night," Jones said.

He cited a front-page story in last week's Wall Street Journal that characterized a racial divide in Bowie, Md.

"I think that institutions such as Cornell need to be training generations of students who know how to reach across the racial divide and bring Americans together," Jones said. "When I read a story like that, it leaves me with the sense that we simply have to get past this, get beyond it as a country.

"If we can't look to our elite institutions to train future generations to have a strong instinct to be bigger than race, so to speak, to define themselves much more broadly, if we don't get that out of our elite institutions, I don't know who we would expect to provide that leadership."

The story behind the Perkins Prize reflects those aspirations. It was established by Jones, a leader of the 1969 student protests at Cornell. The prize is named for the Cornell president who founded COSEP, engineered a 25-fold increase in Cornell's minority undergraduate student body and established the Black Studies Center leading to the creation of the Africana Studies and Research Center, then left office in the aftermath of the protests. Announcement of the prize in 1994, signaling a reconciliation between Jones and Perkins (who died in 1998), was a moving occasion and a testament to the idealism of both men.

Previous winners of the Perkins Prize were Seth Meinero'95 for his work with the Cornell Political Forum, the Festival of Black Gospel, Orpheus Malik Williams '98 for his work with Peer Educators in Human Relations, Akwe:kon, the Multicultural Living Learning Unit and, last year, the Campus Climate Committee.

Applications can be downloaded from the Perkins Prize selection committee web site, http://www.dos.cornell.edu/dos/perkinsprize.html , and sent to Sue McNamara in the Office of the Dean of Students in Willard Straight Hall.

Jones says his goal is to highlight and encourage proactive efforts at improving race relations at Cornell.

"My impression," he said, "is that too often there's more of an approach of benign neglect. People are happy to have relative peace. Their goal is acceptance as opposed to commitment, whereas what they should be asking is, 'Have we really created a climate that gives people a reason to come here because of the positive racial experience?'"

Jones expects to be on campus when the 2001 Perkins Prize is awarded, April 18. The $5,000 grant he has endowed is to be used by the winner to further the work that earned the prize.