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Diversity for me -- but not for thee
The Consortium for Faculty Diversity at Liberal Arts Colleges seems, on the surface, to be committed to the right things: "The Consortium is committed to increasing the diversity of students, faculty members and curricular offerings at liberal arts colleges with a particular focus on enhancing the diversity of faculty members and of applicants for faculty positions," begins its mission statement. Who could argue with the goal of ensuring that liberal arts colleges cultivate a wide and enriching variety of students, faculty, and course offerings? Surely that's what liberal education is all about.
But diversity is not always what is meant when diversity is invoked, and that's the case with the Consortium. Reading further in the Consortium's mission statement, it becomes clear that the definition of diversity to which it and its long list of member schools (scroll down) adhere is narrow indeed:
The Consortium was founded as an association of liberal arts colleges committed to strengthening the ethnic diversity of students and of faculty members at liberal arts colleges. The early goals of the Consortium with regard to faculty diversity included encouraging U.S. citizens who are members of under-represented minority groups to complete their graduate programs and to consider faculty employment in liberal arts colleges.
So diversity as a value in itself is not really what the Consortium is all about. It's clear from this paragraph that ethnic diversity is the only sort of diversity that matters here. To be clear: There's nothing wrong with promoting ethnic diversity at liberal arts colleges. But there is something wrong--or at least profoundly disingenuous--about presenting inititatives centered on "diversity" and inititatives centered on "ethnic diversity" as synonymous enterprises. They are not the same thing. And to treat them as if they are is to erase the claims of other forms of diversity that are arguably more immediately germane to intellectual environments. Intellectual diversity, as numerous studies have shown, is sorely lacking in higher education; faculties are enormously one-sided when it comes to political affiliations and the intellectual outlooks that derive from them, even as race-based hiring and promotion initiatives ensure that faculties are becoming ever more ethnically diverse. Increasing ethnic diversity does not increase intellectual diversity, though often the argument justifying the one is that it enhances the other--that a range of skin colors and heritages is needed in order to ensure a range of ideas.
The Consortium makes just this assumption. It is currently accepting applications for dissertation fellowships and post-docs "from those who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents who will contribute to increasing the diversity of member colleges by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximizing the educational benefits of diversity and/or increasing the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of students." The assumption here is that the mere presence of ethnic minorities on college faculties is educational--which in turn presumes a predominantly white, privileged student body so cloistered that the very sight of someone different will be morally edifying. That's an insult to both the minority faculty member, who is treated like a token and a spectacle in this logic, and to the student body, which tends to be more savvy, more experienced, and, well, more diverse, than the logic allows.
The assumption here is also that ethnic faculty members should "use" their minority status--their "diversity"--in the classroom, turn it into a "resource for enriching the education of students." It's hard to picture exactly how this would work in an intellectually responsible way. Faculty members should not be pedagogically bound by identity politics; they ought not to feel that "using" their skin color or cultural heritage in the classroom is part of their job description; their academic freedom is narrowed to the extent that they do feel so obligated. Likewise, students should not be subjected to gratuitous or aggressive professorial "uses" of minority status. That's a violation of their own academic freedom--as some schools are beginning to recognize (Penn State just passed a remarkable statement on student acadmic freedom that clearly prohibits professors from promoting political agendas or deviating from the designated subject matter in class).
Diversity as a concept has a nice, soft appeal. It sounds on the surface like a reasonable and noble aim, one to which only intolerant bigots and the fundamentally ignorant could object. But it doesn't take much examination to begin to see how readily the concept is appropriated in the service of far less reasonable and legitimate aims. The Consortium--which counts schools such as Bowdoin, Carleton, Bryn Mawr, Grinnell, Hamilton, Oberlin, Reed, Swarthmore, Vassar, and Wellesley among its members--is driving an agenda that deserves a skeptical eye.
Posted by acta online at December 15, 2006 10:18 AM
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