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[Fwd: Diversity v/s Affirmative Action]
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ging-@socrates.berkeley.edu
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Sep 29, 2007 11:31 PDT
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FYI.
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Diversity v/s Affirmative Action
From: ruh-@berkeley.edu
Date: Sat, September 29, 2007 11:15 am
To: socg-@lists.berkeley.edu
bg-@lists.berkeley.edu
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[This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education is by Richard Tapia,
a member of the National Academy of Sciences.]
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Diversity in Academe- From the issue dated September 28, 2007
"True Diversity Doesn't Come From Abroad"
By RICHARD A. TAPIA
For more than four decades, universities have used affirmative-action
policies to increase the participation of U.S.-born women and members of
minority groups in higher education, where traditionally they have been
underrepresented. Yet those policies, often applied in decisions about
which students to admit and which faculty members to hire, have been
controversial, particularly where minority groups are concerned. The
policies have faced repeated legal challenges, and the courts have set and
then changed the rules for their use, making the legitimate space carved
out for racial affirmative action as small as possible. One result is that
universities have changed their focus from improving domestic-minority
representation to attaining broad cultural diversity on their campuses.
In the 1978 landmark case Regents of the University of California v.
Bakke, while ruling against racial admissions quotas, the U.S. Supreme
Court concluded that there was a compelling interest to have diversity in
the student body and upheld affirmative-action programs that did not
involve fixed quotas. But in Hopwood v. Texas (1996), the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit questioned the continued vitality of Bakke
and struck down race-conscious admissions in Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Texas. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), however, the Supreme Court
reaffirmed Bakke and upheld the race-conscious admissions policies of the
University of Michigan's law school, ruling that race can be one of many
factors considered by institutions when selecting their students because
it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits
that flow from a diverse student body."
Over all, the rulings on affirmative action in higher education have said
that diversity is a legitimate goal of universities, based on the
reasoning that the institutions' educational missions can best be carried
out with diverse student bodies. On the surface, then, it seems as if
representation is in safe hands. However, if universities (and the courts,
for that matter) assume that encouraging diversity will encourage
representation, they are mistaken.
The term "diversity" has virtually replaced "affirmative action" and
"representation" in discussions of minority issues in academe, following
the language of the courts. That shift was more than semantic. It was
accompanied by a shift in direction.
Whereas affirmative-action policies aimed to solve the problems faced by
large segments of the U.S. population in gaining access to higher
education, the new emphasis on diversity led to a focus on the
representation of many types of people, defined by religion, language, and
other cultural attributes. As required by the courts, diversity was
interpreted very broadly.
Over time, more and more groups were included under the diversity
umbrella. Most notably, diversity took on an international flavor, and
diversity programs and activities typically began to emphasize an
understanding of the world's many ethnic groups. While the shift away from
affirmative action's focus on American diversity and domestic-minority
groups may not have been intentional, new efforts toward inclusion are.
In addition, the shift toward broad inclusiveness has played to an
established strength of academe: bringing many types of people together in
a common endeavor of work and study. It encouraged universities to
continue doing what they already were doing rather well.
No one could object to promoting an appreciation of other cultures,
especially in the academy. But the new emphasis on world cultures obscures
the domestic problems that gave rise to affirmative action. Representation
is both a tougher goal to meet than diversity, and a very different one.
It involves getting to the root of problems still deeply embedded in our
own culture, and dealing with their consequences in higher education.
Nearly 30 percent of U.S. citizens are black or Hispanic. The broad
approach to diversity does not focus on those Americans. In fact, it has
led to confusion about who belongs to a minority group.
For instance, when I express concern to colleagues about the extremely low
representation on our campus of minority graduate students and faculty
members, the answers I usually get run along the lines of: "But we have a
woman from Buenos Aires in the department" or "I have three Chinese
students and a Russian" or "I have a postdoc from Nigeria."
My colleagues believe they are working toward diversity, and in a literal
sense, they are. When I point out that domestic underrepresentation is the
critical problem, they reply, "Well, when considering diversity, we simply
have to go with the best, and the best is the foreign minority." But
comparing international and domestic students, majority or minority, is
not as straightforward as it might seem.
Many international students were admitted to graduate school in the United
States because they were highly competitive and the best students of their
nations. Often the products of early academic tracking, they have had
strong educational foundations and intense, specialized study in their
fields. They are stronger candidates for admission than all but the very
best American undergraduates. In the sciences, math, and engineering -
which tend to attract the largest numbers of international students -
Americans are particularly at a disadvantage. In those disciplines,
American minority students are not competing chiefly with other Americans,
as their peers in the humanities are, but with the best that the world has
to offer. Frequently, their weaker academic backgrounds mean they are not
admitted, and when they are, they are often left to fend for themselves.
International students and scholars contribute significantly to the high
quality of American colleges and universities, and to the nation's
economy. We should continue to welcome the best talent from around the
world.
But those foreign students and faculty members have not experienced
anything like the hardships that members of domestic-minority groups have
faced year after year. They were not viewed as racially or ethnically
different in their countries of origin and, from their formative years on,
made to feel that they were second-class citizens who did not belong in
higher education or in leadership positions. People from places like
Africa, Spain, or Latin America cannot be effective role models or mentors
for African-Americans and Latinos who grew up in the United States. In
fact, it is not unusual for those foreigners to view their
domestic-minority counterparts negatively and to strongly resist being
identified with them.
Correcting the underrepresentation of minority groups, then, has little to
do with international programs. The presence of foreign scholars - even
those who are black, brown, or Spanish-speaking - does little to solve the
problem of our universities' lack of success with Mexican-American, Puerto
Rican, and black youth from across the United States. Foreigners should
not count when we are talking about underrepresentation of American
groups.
Diversity initiatives began in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a way to
solve broad, deep, race-based problems in American society. But with its
shift in meaning, diversity today is a sort of red herring. We can deceive
ourselves that we are taking the right steps to increase diversity when in
fact we are ignoring what is still one of this country's most troubling
issues: educating our minority youth.
I believe that many administrators were well intentioned as they guided
the design of their universities' diversity polices and statements,
thinking that diversity would translate into representation. However, they
built in few checks or accountability. Thus, universities continue to
recruit the best students and faculty members from around the world, but
now they do so in the name of diversity.
What does diversity do for minorities? Unfortunately, not very much.
Richard A. Tapia is a university professor and a professor of computation
and applied mathematics at Rice University, where he also directs the
Center for Excellence and Equity in Education.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Diversity in Academe
Volume 54, Issue 5, Page B34
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michele L. Rossi
Ph.D. Candidate
Sociology Department
University of California Berkeley
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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