D Souza

Marc Steiner has his game face on.It is 30 seconds to air time, and the WJHU talk-show host, usually lively and animated, is so still he appears to be meditating. He may not get as nervous as he did when he started the show 2 1/2 years ago, but today's is a tough one, a telephone discussion with Dinesh D'Souza. Mr. D'Souza's latest book, "The End of Racism," which argues that white racism is not the real problem facing black Americans, is perfect for a call-in radio show, controversial and current.

ROBERT H. Chambers, president of Western Maryland College, would have us believe that Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander' criticism of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools is misguided (Other Voices, Nov. 26).According to Chambers, the association's "diversity standard" is anything but "a call for quotas," while "political correctness" (whatever that means) is the farthest thing from the minds of the responsible men and women who take seriously their task of evaluating our colleges and universities.

About six months ago, Kenneth D'Souza of Danbury, Conn., decided to teach himself to type.But he rejected the idea of learning the standard keyboard layout -- commonly known as "Qwerty," after the first six letters on the top alphabet row of the keyboard. He wanted something better, more efficient."And that's why I got Dvorak," says D'Souza, a 27-year-old salesman. "I have never regretted it."Dvorak is an alternative keyboard layout that backers say is faster, easier to learn, easier on the hands and less prone to error than the Qwerty.

Bouncing Bobby Berger greeted me with a hug at the doors of the dinner theater of the Best Western Motel in Baltimore Travel Plaza."Greg, I didn't think you'd make it," Bobby said, obviously happy to see me. He didn't know the half of it. I'd promised him last month that I would attend his retirement performance Mother's Day. That was before I was sent on an assignment abroad. I returned to Baltimore only the previous Monday.So here I was, about to watch Bobby perform his blackface Al Jolson routine for the last time.

Last month, in New York, I had dinner with one of the nation's top black journalists. We began to talk about President Clinton's problems and he said that they stemmed from his being too close to blacks. A few weeks later, I attended a reception that some members of Hawaii's black community had arranged for me, and I heard the same from them: that some whites are after Clinton because he is viewed as a (n-word) lover.An African-American comedian has observed that because Clinton receives a check from the government, cheats on his wife and plays the saxophone, he's a stereotypical black man. As scurrilous as this may sound, there is an element of truth in this statement.

IMPOSTORS IN THE TEMPLE. By Martin Anderson. Simon & Schuster. 256 pages. $22.THE MAIN contribution of this indictment of academic practices is an assault on the use of graduate students -- teaching assistants -- to teach university classes. "Children teaching children" cheats the undergraduates and exploits the graduate students, delaying the degrees of both.All because professors want to do research and not teach. Or not actually do the research; research is pretty tedious. The vulnerable graduate students can do that, too -- as long as the tenured professors who hold the fate of the graduate students in their hands get credit in academic journals for the papers.

CHICAGO - Standing in al-Firdos Square in Baghdad after the statue of Saddam Hussein came crashing down, Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Eby of the U.S. Marines was approached by Iraqis telling him U.S. troops should stay for as long as two years. "I was thinking to myself, `I was hoping two hours,'" he told a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Eby is probably not the only American who is realizing that the task ahead is bigger and more open-ended than many of us had expected. Iraq is not like Grenada or Panama or even Afghanistan, where we moved in to depose an unfriendly government and then left the locals to take it from there.

FOUNDATIONS embody the noble dream that has lifted the hearts of American liberals -- of the nation as a vast laboratory for the reasoned programs of the elite. Charities, churches and synagogues might feed and house the hungry and the homeless. The task of foundations is different: to launch programs that carry public policy in new and uncharted directions, to benefit the whole of society.In the decades following the Second World War, foundations used their position at the intersection of the elite worlds of government, politics, academia and the press to remake America in their own progressive image.

In this week of debate over civil rights and quotas, we should ask a potentially ominous question: Is America splitting apart?Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s ''The Disuniting of America'' expresses the fear in muscular language. He says that ''unscrupulous hucksters whose claim to speak for minorities is thoughtlessly accepted by the media'' could push America into a ''quarrelsome spatter of enclaves, ghettoes and tribes'' that exalt ''cultural and linguistic apartheid.''Mr. Schlesinger's concerns are shared by both liberals and conservatives.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Thomas Jefferson - whose greatest work, the Declaration of Independence, was celebrated for the 227th time Friday - observed in 1774: "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." That was one of those rare church-state moments that rings as true as the Liberty Bell before it cracked. And yet we witness people in the world - and, I fear, increasingly in our country - who believe and act as if God not only gave us life but also required us to be in bondage.