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Penn does the diversity shuffle
At the University of Pennsylvania, debate currently rages about a proposed new diversity course requirement. The debate seems to revolve around two perspectives--opponents see it as a politically motivated requirement that attempts to impose an ideological agenda on Penn undergrads; proponents don't. The Daily Pennsylvanian's coverage of the debate documents a garbled dialogue indeed. "Concerned students and faculty initially advocated for an academic requirement that would focus on U.S. minority culture, but some now worry that the focus has become diluted by a political agenda," the DP notes; "At the most recent discussion over the requirement, held last week, many attendees focused on the broader political message that such a requirement could send about the importance of diversity, rather than on its academic merit."
The debate surrounding this requirement appears to be impaled on the horns of the diversity dilemma itself. It is telling that, at least as the DP reports it, dialogue about the requirement rests squarely on a false dichotomy--either the diversity requirement has academic merit or it is a political maneuver. If Penn is to have a productive discussion about the proposed requirement, both opponents and proponents ought to recognize that higher education has thoroughly scrambled the distinction between academic merit and ideological agenda by instituting just such requirements as the one they are considering implementing at Penn. Any academic merit such a requirement would have is grounded in the by-now nearly universal academic assumption that promoting the politics of "diversity" is a legitimate educational agenda. Advocates of the requirement cannot have it both ways; to claim, as Arts & Sciences dean Dennis DeTurck does, that "any new requirement should have a primarily academic purpose and that any political agenda would be secondary," is to descend into the self-rationalizing zone of doublethink.
Posted by acta online on March 30, 2006 at March 30, 2006 09:40 AM
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Comments
I don't know for sure, but suspect that Penn is on semesters. If it is like Brown and Harvard, all classes have equal weight in terms of credit, equivalent to 4 units per course at most other places. Graduation is 30 courses. Five courses a semester, if they are really worth the credit value, is a lot. Any extra requirement has a substantial opportunity cost. A well developed core sequence, or a set of distribution requirements that cover important material well may be worth it, but anything not essential in the core costs more than it gains. As Kim's lama said (or his letter writer translated), "Education is greatest blessing if of best sorts. Otherwise no earthly use." A real core is critical material. Other requirements for non-critical reasons are traffic school without having gotten a ticket.
Posted by: Mike McKeown at April 1, 2006 12:19 PM