Moynihan Report Revisited

An audience of academics and activists gathered last night to revisit an age-old controversy triggered by politician and former Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on the source of poverty in the black urban community.

The Moynihan report was leaked to the press during his tenure as U.S. assistant secretary of labor, prompting an uproar because of its claims that the “tangled pathology” and fragmented structure of black families led to high poverty rates among urban blacks.

The three-day conference, “The Moynihan Report Revisited: Lessons and Reflections After Four Decades,” began yesterday by addressing the report’s consequences and assessing the current condition of black families. The event was jointly sponsored by the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS), the Sociology Department, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute.

“The Moynihan report, I think, did not get a fair hearing. For that reason, we organized this conference today,” said Douglass S. Massey, president of the AAPSS. Massey organized the event with Sociology Department Chair Robert J. Sampson.

The evening began with speaker James Q. Wilson, a former Harvard professor and Moynihan’s close friend, who said the deceased politician never assigned blame to individuals for the often high rates of poverty, unemployment, and incarceration in the black community.

Instead, Moynihan saw slavery and persisting discrimination as the main culprits, Wilson said.

Geyser University Professor William J. Wilson said that local editorials at the time “embellished” Moynihan’s words and quoted only his most “bold” and “attention-grabbing” statements out of context.

Following the speeches, attendees had the opportunity to pose questions and further discuss the report at a reception.

The conference will continue today and tomorrow, focusing less on the report itself and more on its current significance to society, politics, and public policy. Topics to be discussed will include black male joblessness, discrimination in the workplace, and the presidential bid of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School.

Harvard hired Moynihan to teach at the University from 1966 to 1977. A four-term Democratic senator from New York, Moynihan died in 2003, a year after delivering the 2002 Harvard Commencement address.