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Dr. John Spiegel, director of Brandeis University's Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence, approached black militancy from the opposite camp. Many municipal leaders, he reported, still deny that there is a racial problem in their respective cities. "If trouble comes, they blame it on punks, outsiders and Communists rather than on white racism and other injustices." Another group of city officials, said Dr. Spiegel, act as if they understand the problem, speak expansively about the steps they are taking, but in reality do little or nothing constructive. Spiegel calls this "the Jerry Cavanagh Phenomenon." Detroit, where Cavanagh is mayor, suffered the nation's most destructive riots last summer despite a race-relations program considered effective by the city's government. "We are more willing to settle for violence than to change the social attitudes underlying it," says Spiegel, "just as many people are willing to suffer neuroses rather than undergo treatment and work to resolve them."