EDITOR’S PAGE

TWO YEARS AGO, a stranger named James Crupi rode into town and kicked at the foundation on which Dallas is built. As a professor at Georgia State University, Crupi had researched leadership structures in several Sunbelt cities, including his home base of Atlanta, Miami, and Houston. Dallas was the “jewel,” as he puts it, that he needed to complete the research project. His report, promised for public consumption in August of 1984, has never appeared. It’s now a manuscript in search of a publisher. Still, Crupi’s view of Dallas has been widely reported and discussed, In several speeches, including one particularly controversial presentation at The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, Crupi challenged us to take a hard look at Dallas’ Official World Posture. He said things like “Too many people are looking for leaders and not becoming them,” and “Dallas doesn’t have any idea how it’s going to make its mark on the world,” and “The black community in Dallas is the weakest black community in the U.S. ,” and “Goals For Dallas is a relic from another era.”

We don’t take too kindly to that kind of talk from outsiders. And for a while there, Crupi stirred up a heated debate. The boyish professor’s remarks were regurgitated with some regularity in the press. And in fact, they still are. Here and there, tucked into stories about Dallas’ emerging internationalism, is the inevitable, “According to Dr. James Crupi, we are fast becoming a world of city-states…”

But privately, some of those same leaders “studied” by Crupi two summers ago are asking, who is this guy? How did he come up with a laundry list of urban insights in five weeks? There is no question that Crupi called some of his shots with uncanny clarity. But the truth is, the chapter on this brazen interloper would have closed long ago, were it not for one minor detail: he is now among us. Last June, Crupi snuck into Dallas virtually unnoticed. (Controversial celebrities have a way of doing that; see The Madonna Move, page 70.) Local investor Milledge Hart, a founder with Ross Perot of EDS, gave Crupi the financial backing to move his nonprofit International Leadership Center to Dallas. If you think we’ve heard the last from James Crupi, think again.

Crupi has emerged as the Messiah of shrinking planet politics. To cut through the jargon of which he is fond, this is our mission, should we choose to accept it: the guys who run this city are going to have to do a heck of a lot more than keep the homefront tidy. The Mayor of Dallas the Emerging City-State has a mission that makes the job of Mayor of Dallas Our Hometown look like child’s play. He (and I say “he” because Crupi views women in Dallas as powerless) will be expected to converse as eloquently on biogenetic research in Oslo as on bus service in Oak Cliff. Where will we find such leaders in the future? So glad you asked. And hence, Crupi’s move to Dallas, a city in the grips of a global imperative (see World Class At Last?, page 56).

This month, thirty-four local rookies in the worldwide business game will be indoctrinated into internationalism. Crupi-style. The International Business Fellows Program, which has been under way in Atlanta for the past six years, has come to Dallas. According to Crupi, the two-week initiation session-one week in Dallas, one week in London-promises no less than a whirlwind tour of global concerns, from world econometrics to the Soviet mindset to common cultural faux pas.

There is much to be said for recruiting and developing leaders for an ever-more complex world. Our own chamber of commerce offers numerous commendable programs that strive to do just that. No doubt the ranks of applicants to Crupi’s new Fellowship will swell as word of the program (which, Crupi boasts, “changes its participants forever”) begins to spread. But in this month of International Awareness, let us think hard about what we as a city can hope to become by being “international.” As we train our antennae outward, we must not forget the static on the screen at home. There is little risk in a world view that acknowledges the beauty in multifarious cultures. But can we take on Tokyo before we solve our own educational problems? Do we dare to compete with Paris without a purposeful cultural policy? If our image as an International City garners us new trade partners and economic trickle-down, then we all win. But our real mission is not to memorize currency fluctuation tables or Common Market price structures. The real test is to apply all that we learn back home.



THIS MONTH, you will see a new look on the pages of D. The graphics have been refined after many months of thoughtful tinkering by Art Director Matthew Drace and his able assistants Mark Oehlschlaeger and Leon Banowetz. A redesign is not something we undertake lightly. The last significant change in D’s graphics occurred some sixty-five issues ago. What we strive for is a format that helps us deliver strong articles within the most efficient and compelling use of space.

With this issue we also premiere a new style section, called Back Of The Book, page 187. Each month, under the direction of Teena Gritch McMills, we will chronicle living trends in fashion and beauty, food, the home, leisure, and nightlife. Back Of The Book will be a vital, colorful forum that we hope will become an eagerly anticipated feature of D.