Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- There is everything wrong and nothing right with Michigan's Nov. 7 ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action.

Rather than root out flawed affirmative-action programs, the amendment -- the Orwellian-named Michigan Civil Rights Initiative -- is a diversity sledgehammer.

The measure would wipe off the Michigan map the most compelling, carefully designed efforts to address racial and gender imbalances. Doing so would handcuff Michigan's -- and ultimately the nation's -- ability to confront our most compelling economic challenges in at least two important ways.

First, the MCRI would impede our capacity to deal with projected skills gaps in our workforce. A bipartisan Aspen Institute report, led by David Ellwood, dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, found that the U.S. pool of workers aged 25-64, which grew 44 percent over the last 20 years, won't expand in the next 20. Meanwhile, blacks, Hispanics and women -- groups underrepresented in the areas of science and engineering -- will make up a bigger proportion of our workforce.

To increase the pool of skilled workers in areas critical to our economy, we need an all-out national effort to boost the percentages of women and minorities who want degrees in science, engineering and math.

Around the nation, innovative programs that seek to close these skills gaps have already cropped up. Sally Ride, the first U.S. female astronaut in space, has started a nationwide network of clubs and camps that exposes girls to the sciences.

Banned in Michigan

The Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago, which opened in 2000, offers an intensive sciences curriculum for its mostly black female students. It was ranked first among Chicago public schools last year in its five-year graduation rate.

Wayne State University in Detroit has developed a two-year program to increase the graduation rates of its Latino students by offering tutoring, counseling, and cultural-education programs. The University of Michigan hosts visits by local schools with high minority-student enrollment to encourage more to aspire to a college degree.

Based on the interpretation of measures similar to the MCRI that were passed in Washington state and in California, all efforts to encourage minorities and women to seek college and technical degrees would be banned in Michigan if they had any government involvement.

Susan Kaufmann, associate director of the University of Michigan's Center for the Education of Women, says programs that encourage women and minority-owned businesses to compete for local-government contracts could be eliminated.

Business Backing

Second, the MCRI ignores the business case for diversity, made by Fortune 500 companies in an amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger that unsuccessfully challenged the University of Michigan Law School's policy of considering race as one factor in admissions.

As the Fortune 500 brief says, ``today's global marketplace and the increasing diversity in the American population demand cross-cultural experience and understanding.''

For our nation's businesses, competing in the global economy places a premium not only on diverse workforces, but on workers who can thrive in racially and ethnically diverse contexts. This point is critical because it underscores the fact that a diverse student body benefits both minority and white students by giving everyone the chance to form friendships with those from different geographic, ethnic and racial backgrounds.

`The Highest Importance'

Even George Washington recognized the benefit of diversity in universities when he argued in 1796 that establishing a National University would be ``of the highest importance'' because ``young men from different parts of the United States would be assembled together, and would by degrees discover that there was not that cause for jealousies and prejudices which one part of the Union had imbibed against another part.''

Supporters of the MCRI, such as its author Ward Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, believe that we should see the slightest consideration of racial diversity as the moral and legal equivalent of our most pernicious past practices of discrimination. Yet, our shameful history of excluding, segregating and imposing second-class citizenship on minorities shouldn't be used as a rationale to handcuff universities from taking steps to ensure a racially diverse student body.

Not surprisingly, under the MCRI, universities would still be able to award preferences for linebackers, legacies, children of big donors, and those from remote states. In the name of civil rights, the only steps that a college couldn't take to increase diversity would be the type designed to improve racial understanding, to ensure a diverse learning environment, and to address underrepresentation in critical sectors of our workforce.

The MCRI is wrong on understanding our history, wrong on the meaning of civil rights and wrong for the economic needs of both Michigan and for the U.S.

(Gene Sperling, author of ``The Pro-Growth Progressive,'' was President Bill Clinton's top economic adviser. He is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Gene Sperling in Washington at gsperling@cfr.org.

Last Updated: November 3, 2006 04:40 EST