Lino Graglia

Professor Graglia

Lino Anthony Graglia (born January 22, 1930) is a law professor who challenged liberals in 1997 for blaming the poor academic performance of minority students on cultural differences.

Dan Seligman wrote:

Among many horror stories is the current row over Lino Graglia, the University of Texas at Austin law professor now in trouble for having stated an obvious truth: that black and MexicanAmerican students are 'not academically competitive' with white students. Graglia gave the most benign possible explanation for this educational gap: minority students were not genetically or intellectually inferior but were suffering from a cultural background in which scholarship was not exalted. But that explanation got him nowhere. He has been attacked by every editorial page in Nexis that has weighed in on the matter. (He did better in the letters columns.) ^[1]

The late Joaquin Cigarroa, a Laredo physician, active on several educational boards, spoke out against statements made by Graglia, regarding the racial makeup of university students. Graglia said that blacks and Mexican Americans are "not academically competitive with whites in selective institutions. They have a culture that seems not to encourage achievement.” In a speech at the State Capitol in Austin, Cigarroa responded:

Our voices have been muted by some, and our presence sometimes rejected. If we do not do what is within our power to respond to the likes of Professor Graglia, and if we do not responsibly assure for the continuation of vibrant diversity and the excellence that it fosters, we must bear in part responsibility for the decline of our great institutions, of general education and of Texas society. ... All of us involved in education should encourage Texans of every background to attain the highest level of education possible."^[2]

• Intelligence testing
• The Bell Curve
• Race and intelligence