Who or what inspired you to enter into public service?
I came of age in the 1960s and was greatly influenced by MLK, JFK, and
LBJ, all of whom believed that government could and should be used to
advance civil rights and economic opportunities, and social justice. For
much of US history, government had supported slavery and racial
discrimination. As a young black man growing up in Texas, I was well aware of
this history. King, Kennedy, and Johnson helped me to appreciate that
government could be used to lift people up instead of contributing to their
oppression. I majored in Government at the University of Texas because I
wanted to be part of that change.

What is your favorite class you have ever taught or took and why?
One of my favorite teachers, ever, was Mrs. Edwina Wheaton, who taught
English at Jack Yates High School in Houston. In college and graduate
school, I took courses from Elinor Ostrom at Indiana University and from Douglas Rae and Robert Dahl at Yale.

As regards my own teaching, my favorite course was Race, Immigration, and Citizenship. I liked it because I felt it broke new ground by demonstrating the close relationship between US race policy and US immigration policy. (Donald Trump made that relationship clear when he
talked about prefering immigrants from Nordic countries to immigrants
from [other] countries.) But I was also rather fond of my American
Defense Policy course because, in the course of presenting basic information about how the Defense Department works, it also pointed out all organizations, public and private, have to answer the same questions: What is your product (or policy)? And how will you acquire the people, money, and materials to produce your product (or implement your policy)?

What advice would you give to those interested in pursuing public policy or public administration as a career?
Do it. Do it because the machinery of government needs to be run by dedicated, talented people. And do it because it is fulfilling By the way, I am including military service.

What is your favorite cuisine?
Mex-Tex and barbecue.

What is your favorite hobby or activity that you enjoy doing in your free time?
Bike riding. Easier on my arthritic joints than tennis and running, which I
used to love.

Who in your life has been an influential mentor or inspiration for you?

My mother’s brothers and sisters. They were laborers; only a couple of the eight siblings finished high school. But they were decent, hard-working folks who cared for on another and were dedicated to preserving the farm on which they grew up. I spent much of my youth on the farm. My grandmother had to fight to keep that farm because some of her white neighbors didn’t like the idea of a black woman controlling property. Subsequent generations have dedicated themselves to keeping those scrubby 90 acres of Texas.

I also was influenced, in a very specific way, by Barbara Jordan. I first saw
her when she gave a speech at my junior high school.(She was a young lawyer at the time.) I had been struggling to overcome a speech defect, and when I heard her near-perfect (actually, exaggerated) diction, I was inspired to keep working on the tedious pronunciation exercises that a speech therapist had given me several years earlier.

What was your dream job as a child?
I was a child in the 1950s, when the dreams of black children in Texas were constrained by the realities of racism. I aspired to do well in school, be the first person in my family to finish college, and to see what happened after that. Fortunately, the world started to open up when I was in college.