Why
does diversity in higher education matter? And why are the upcoming
decisions of the Supreme Court in the Michigan cases of Grutter
and Gratz so very important to the future of higher education and
academic freedom in our democracy?
I begin with three personal stories, none very
dramatic, but each relevant to these questions.
Story No. One — I’m in sixth
grade, the only Jewish girl in my elementary school in Harriman,
N.Y., a very small, predominantly Protestant working-class community
50 miles north of New York City. My classmates have brown hair and
brown eyes, except the two recently arrived Chinese girls in our
class who have black hair and black eyes. Our teacher introduces
a new girl into the class. Like me, she has blonde hair and blue
eyes. Without missing a beat, my best friend, Diane Turnbull, intelligent
and insightful, exclaims, “Oh, she must be Jewish!”
Story No. Two — I’m now a senior
in Monroe-Woodbury Central High School, applying to college and
for financial aid. The summer before my senior year, my father —
who was the sole earner in the family — died very suddenly
of a heart attack. With no savings, my mother and I are concerned
about how we will support ourselves. A college recruiter comes to
my high school and, as I later discover, my principal tells him
that I won’t need any financial aid. He apparently assumed
that since we’re Jewish, we are rich. I was fortunate enough
to receive a full scholarship to college, and my mother, ironically
enough, was hired as secretary to my high school principal.
Story No. Three — Also when I was
a senior in high school, a male friend, one of only a handful of
African-American students in my high school of 800, was accepted
into a large university in the Midwest. A few weeks later he visits
the university and is told there was a mistake in his acceptance.
Nothing is ever mentioned about his race, but he (and no one else
in my senior class) is rejected after having received a letter of
acceptance.
Although much has changed since then, I recall
these stories because they illustrate central features of the way
fallible human beings may readily react to people with whom we are
unfamiliar unless we are educated otherwise. The kind of education
we need — the kind most narrowly tailored toward achieving the
relevant educational goals — is not book learning per se but
learning in an educational community with diverse others, those
others who have the most to contribute to democratic education.
One central reason why diversity matters is that it is highly unlikely
that we will be taught to dispel stereotypes simply from reading
books in isolation rather than from having an integrated educational
experience, which consists of learning from diverse others as well
as from books.
These stories therefore remain revealing and relevant.
I put them in ascending order of concern. The first — “Oh
she must be Jewish” — story, is significant because it
shows how easily stereotypes are created and — as important
for our topic of the relevancy of diversity in education —
how false they can be even when they are not particularly damaging
to a person. False stereotypes, even if benign in their social effects,
are still false. Surely an important part of higher education is
to teach students truths rather than falsehoods about the world,
to dispel false stereotypes about people that are so very easy to
adopt. An educational institution can dispel stereotypes only if
there are sufficient numbers of people of any given stereotype to
live down the stereotype.
The second — “Oh she must be rich if
she’s Jewish” — story, moves one more step toward
illustrating the kind of serious social problem that diversity in
education addresses. This story shows that false stereotypes, even
if complimentary, can be harmful. In this particular case, however,
I was not harmed. I could have been and others no doubt have been
by rash assumptions about how rich or poor, intelligent or ignorant,
brash or diffident, individuals are because of their group identities.
Which brings me to the third story, the one in
which a student was seriously harmed by the false and pervasive
stereotyping of his group. He is a member of a group that has been
subject to great harm for centuries in this country, for which higher
education does not have the capacity to compensate. I therefore
tell this story not as it relates to claims about compensatory justice
for African-Americans, but rather because it reflects a failing
of higher education that is the most endemic to our nation’s
history. At the same time, it is a story that many Americans think
is so outmoded that what we should really be worrying about today
is not discrimination against African-Americans but reverse discrimination
against white men. After all, no college or university these days
would reject a highly qualified African-American after having sent
him an acceptance letter. Indeed, most colleges and universities
these days would love to admit any student with my high school friend’s
profile.
Yet this story is outmoded only in its specific
details, not in its general lesson for higher education. False stereotyping
against African-Americans is persistent and pervasive. Study after
study in recent years has shown that the negative stereotyping of
African-Americans persists in ways that deny equal opportunity or
equal consideration in employment, housing, health care, and consumer
affairs not only to poor but also to middle- and upper-middle class
blacks. With middle-class customers who are identical save for their
skin color, landlords differentially refuse to show rental units,
real estate agents engage in redlining, car dealers raise prices,
store owners suspect shoplifting when faced with a person who is
black rather than white. Just last year, University of Chicago economist
Marianne Bertrand and her colleagues published the results of a
controlled experiment that revealed a remarkable degree of unspoken
racial bias in the way employers determine who they will interview
for a job. Resumes were given to prospective employers that were
absolutely identical but for the first names of the applicants.
Some first names were distinctively African-American. Those resumes
that had African-American sounding first names — like Letoya
and LaKeisha — had 50 percent fewer call-backs for job interviews
than the resumes with Anglo-sounding first names. Surely something
socially and educationally important is still seriously lacking
in our educational system if college-educated professional recruiters
cannot distinguish between qualifications for a position and the
racial signification of people’s first names.
My stories therefore are intended as a supplement
not a substitute for systematic analysis of why diversity matters
in higher education. The question is critical for higher education
today because never before has diversity been so widely accepted
as a goal in higher education yet the means for achieving it so
avidly under attack. Who doesn’t believe in diversity in higher
education? Who believes in homogeneity? Most Americans seem to agree
that diversity is a good thing. But is it clear what we mean by
diversity, and why it matters?
Most
universities take pride in the diversity of their student bodies.
“At NYU, “you will meet all kind of people, so be sure
to take advantage of this unique opportunity!” “We act
to achieve an environment that welcomes and supports diversity,”
says the website of the University of Puget Sound, …“we
act to prepare effectively citizen-leaders for a pluralistic world.”
American businesses also emphasize their commitment
to diversity. Almost every major company in this country speaks
strongly of the economic as well as social importance in a global
world of hiring a diverse professional workforce. General Motor’s
senior management formed eight Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to
better recruit and integrate eight groups into their workforce:
African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, gay and lesbian, non-U.
S. citizens, women, white males, and people with disabilities. (Companies
as diverse as Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart
all emphasize how much diversity matters to their success.)
The convergence of selective universities and
global businesses in defending diversity is not coincidental. The
amicus brief submitted in the Michigan case by MIT, Stanford, Du
Pont, IBM, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and the
National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering highlights
why the convergence is not a coincidence. “Collaboration with
diverse individuals is a critical part of science and engineering.
The advancement of science has become an increasingly collaborative
enterprise, and science and engineering have increasingly become
global enterprises that cannot be limited by boundaries, backgrounds,
races or cultures.” Why diversity for both educational and
economic purposes? Because “diversity leads to increased creativity,
productivity, and success in science and engineering fields.”
“Diverse work teams create better and more innovative products
and ideas than homogeneous teams.”
Such claims about the educational value and productivity
of social diversity build upon an insight into the means to both
knowledge and self-understanding that was famously offered almost
150 years ago by John Stuart Mill’s in “On Liberty.”
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of
that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to
refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on
the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are,
he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”
Mill goes on to say something even more relevant
to the debate over diversity today: “Nor is it enough that
he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers,
presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer
as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments
or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able
to hear them from persons who actually believe them, who defend
them in earnest and do their very utmost for them. He must know
them in their most plausible and persuasive form….”
This argument for why social diversity matters
in education is not directly about social justice. Rather it’s
about the content of higher education. The educational imperative
is not only to hear the “Other Side” of arguments, it
is also — and as importantly — to think through a complicated
problem by being stimulated by diverse others to think outside the
box we have become accustomed to by our own backgrounds, which are
necessarily limited and therefore limiting. Diversity in higher
education has the capacity to stretch our limits.
We
now have three educational ends for which gender, racial, ethnic,
and other significant forms of social diversity are a means. The
ends are:
(1) breaking down false stereotypes of groups,
(2) hearing opposite sides of an argument, and
(3) stimulating creative thinking by associating
with people of different identities or upbringings who offer different
approaches to problems.
These ends generally work not because diversity
is comfortable or comforting but rather because just the reverse
is generally true. Diversity is often uncomfortable and discomforting,
and it thereby stimulates creative thinking. Diversity of a significant
sort forces upon us the discomfort (as Mill put it) of being “thrown…into
the mental position of those who think differently from [us] and
consider[ing] what such persons have to say….”
This statement captures only part of the truth
about diversity’s educational value. A second, equally important
part of the educational value of diversity in all societies where
group stereotypes abound is discovering that many people of different
races and upbringings are so very similar to us. They share many
of the same aspirations, values, and so on as more familiar people.
This educational aim — recognizing our common humanity — is
part and parcel of dispelling the false assumption that all x’s — whether
they be African-Americans, Muslims, or Asians — are alike but
unlike “us.”
I began by noting that never before in my adult
lifetime has diversity been so widely accepted as a goal yet the
means for achieving it so publicly under attack. I have presented
three important educational reasons for diversity, but I have yet
to address criticisms of diversity. On what grounds is diversity
opposed?
There
are two very different arguments against diversity that apply directly
to university admissions.
1. The first critique is that diversity is at
best a meaningless goal and at worst destructive one. The goal is
meaningless because no one really cares about all kinds of diversity,
and destructive because it is a subterfuge for universities admitting
groups they like and excluding those they dislike.
2. The second critique accepts diversity as a
goal but disputes the means that many selective colleges and universities,
like NYU and Princeton, use to realize the goal. The critique is
quite specific in claiming that the race-sensitive means employed
to realize diverse student bodies or workforces are unethical and
even unconstitutional.
Both critiques appear in prominent places (such
as the New York Times).
Professor Stanley Fish has put the first critique
most bluntly. Referring to the Michigan affirmative action case,
Fish writes “diversity is not a condition anyone actually desires.”
As he continues: “What people desire is the alternation of
a situation that displeases them; they regard it as an injustice
that some group or population has been excluded from a benefit.
They are not for diversity with a capital D — no one is. They
are for limited expansion of the franchise in the direction of their
preferences.” “… you tout openness when you and your
friends have been shut out.”
Also in the New York Times, James Traub
argues that diversity is a destructive goal because it lets unqualified
people in, thereby harming the more qualified who are left out.
He calls on universities to “Forget Diversity.”
While Fish sees himself as a critic of liberalism,
Traub sees himself as a liberal. He defends the rationale that President
Lyndon Johnson gave for affirmative action: bringing people back
up to the starting point where they would have been were it not
for historical discrimination. In Johnson’s metaphor, we must
“imagine a hundred yard dash in which one of the two runners
had his legs shackled together. He has progressed ten yards, while
the unshackled runner has gone fifty yards. How do they rectify
the situation? Do they merely remove the shackles and allow the
race to proceed?… Would it not be the better part of justice
to allow the previously shackled runner to make up the forty-yard
gap, or to start the race all over again?” This argument has
at best indirect relevance for the value of diversity in higher
education, since universities realistically cannot succeed in their
primary mission of higher education and also compensate by admissions
those students who have been the most shackled, whether by poverty,
race, or other social disadvantages. Life cannot be started over
again for college applicants so that the least advantaged from birth
could benefit most from, and contribute most to, the education that
selective universities have to offer.
Among educational institutions, selective universities
are in the worst position to focus on those individuals — whether
they are poor white Appalachians or African-Americans — who have
been the most harmed by discrimination and other social deprivations.
These individuals are least likely to qualify for entrance as potentially
successful students at NYU and Princeton. To tell selective universities
to “Forget Diversity,” and to say that affirmative action
is only about compensatory justice for the least advantaged, is
to neglect why diversity matters in higher education. Elementary
education, along with childcare, health care, and other basic social
services, are essential to compensatory justice as selective higher
education is not. To tell NYU, Princeton, and other institutions
of higher education to forget diversity is effectively to tell them
to do little or nothing in recognition of how much we still have
to learn from diversity, and how much a diverse student body whose
members are able to succeed academically can contribute to social
leadership. It is a terribly misleading message to tell universities
that we should not worry about diversity as a goal because we cannot
compensate those individuals who have been most educationally disadvantaged.
The Bakke decision got the role of selective higher
education right when it permitted the use of race as one among many
factors in university admissions. On what grounds could Justice
Powell defend the use of race as one among many factors in university
admissions if using race in this way does not really compensate
the least advantaged? Powell’s reasoning makes sense both on
educational grounds and on grounds of academic freedom. Nowhere
does he need to rely on the idea of compensatory justice.
When critics call on universities to forget diversity,
there is something seriously amiss in their reasoning. Diversity
does matter in higher education but not because universities that
attend to diversity are engaging in compensatory justice for shackled
runners in the race for admissions. (This misunderstanding is what
leads critics to think that admitting an African-American from Andover
is unjust.)
Although
the administration’s brief against Michigan calls diversity
“a laudable goal,” a key to understanding why diversity
matters in higher education is not to treat diversity as a laudable
end-in-itself. Diversity is a means to valuable educational and
societal ends, three of which I have articulated, and a fourth of
which is at least as important:
1) Social diversity helps break down false stereotypes
of groups,
2) It helps people take seriously opposite sides
of arguments, and
3) It stimulates creative
thinking by associating with people of their different identities
or upbringings who offer different approaches to problems, even
in science and engineering.
4) Fourth and at least as important, social diversity
in selective universities enables members of all major sectors of
society to attain leadership in our communities, our industries,
our professions, our arts and letters, our government, and our global
marketplace. We must not forget that selective universities are
gatekeepers to the professions and all kinds of valuable social
offices that will be impoverished if they are not socially diverse.
This fourth societal end for which diversity is
a means is so important that it is articulated in almost every amici
brief calling upon the Court in the Michigan case to affirm the
Bakke decision.
The brief of Harvard, Brown, Chicago, Dartmouth,
Duke, Penn, Princeton, and Yale puts it this way:
“Amici have a special interest in this
pair of cases stemming from their distinctive responsibility, since
colonial times, to educate leaders in all walks of life….Every
major profession in this country has sought greater diversity within
its ranks…Empirical data have confirmed the value of amici’s
admissions programs in serving this interest. In a study of 45,000
students who matriculated in 1976 and 1989, Derek Bok and William
Bowen have shown that minority students admitted under these programs
were highly successful in completing rigorous academic programs,
securing good jobs, and contributing to community life.”
Pursuing diversity as a means to these four educational
and societal ends does not aim to remedy the worst forms of social
discrimination. The worst forms of social discrimination are largely
beyond universities, especially selective universities, to correct.
That is a sad social fact. Even sadder but false would be the idea
that because universities cannot do everything to better society,
they should do nothing to improve the kind of education they offer
and to open the pipelines to the professions, and leadership positions
in community, national, and international service that they do partly
control.
Since diversity is a means to these educational
and societal ends, the critique that diversity is a meaningless
or vacuous goal is really beside the point. The critical point worth
emphasizing is that diversity is not an end-in-itself. Almost nobody
desires diversity for its own sake, anymore than anyone desires
equality simply for its own sake. My identity includes three social
markers that are educationally meaningless: I’m blonde, blue-eyed,
and left-handed. When universities and businesses say they favor
diversity, they clearly do not mean to suggest that more blonde,
blue-eyed, left-handers need to be admitted even though this would
make the student body, literally speaking, more diverse. Diversity
is a shorthand for educationally and socially meaningful, not meaningless
diversity. To the extent that the term itself cannot be clear as
to what does and does not count as educationally and socially meaningful
diversity, educators need to be as clear as we can be about what
educational and social ends we are seeking diversity as a means.
We seek the kinds of diversity that (1) breaks
down false stereotypes of groups, (2) enables students to hear educationally
important perspectives from the people who hold those perspectives,
(3) stimulates creative thinking by associating with people of their
different identities or upbringings, and (4) educates members of
all major sectors of society for leadership in our communities,
industries, professions, arts and letters, government, and the global
marketplace. If we didn’t seek these kinds of diversity, we
would not be fulfilling our obligations to the democratic society
that supports us. To democracy, universities owe above all the best
production and dissemination of knowledge, understanding, and professional
opportunity that we can offer.
The
second critique, taken at its strongest, goes as follows:
Racial diversity is a means to socially compelling
ends but most means that selective universities have used to achieve
those socially compelling ends are unethical and unconstitutional.
This is essentially the position taken by Bush
Administration in its brief in the Michigan cases. The brief repeats
“the important goals of openness, educational diversity, and
ensuring all students of all races have meaningful access to institutions
of higher learning.” It says that “universities may adopt
admissions policies that seek to promote experiential, geographical,
political or economic diversity; [it may] modify or discard facially
neutral admissions criteria that tend to skew admissions results
in a way that denies minorities meaningful access to public institutions;
and open educational institutions to the best students from throughout
the State or Nation.” But it may not use race as one among
many criteria for admitting students to the University of Michigan
undergraduate or law school.
The Bush administration supports the “ten-percent
solution” that Texas took in the wake of the Hopwood decision
(of the Fifth Circuit). All students whose GPA puts them in the
top ten percent of their high class are admitted to the Texas public
university of their choice. The ten-percent solution in Texas was
the only way that Texas universities, both public and private, could
find to try to achieve the educational and social ends that are
served by racial diversity without running afoul of the Hopwood
decision. Like the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Hopwood, a Supreme
Court decision to overturn Bakke would apply to both private and
public schools universities, since all receive substantial public
support.
The 10-percent solution is the opposite of a narrowly
tailored means of admitting students by merit. Instead of assessing
all the qualifications of individual applicants, it instead establishes
a mechanistic quota for every school. At least as troubling, its
success in achieving racial diversity depends on the racial segregation
of secondary schools. Moreover, it claims to be race-neutral while
its intention is race-sensitive. Yet another problem is that selective
private universities and professional schools cannot possibly use
a ten-percent solution. Even a one-tenth percent solution would
not work in admitting students nationwide. And no “percent
solution” can reasonably be considered to be a means of admitting
students on the basis of their overall qualifications. High school
GPA is one among many qualifications that count, by no means the
primary let alone the sole qualification as the ten-percent solution
assumes it to be. Although these are more than enough reasons for
the Supreme Court to resist pushing higher education in this direction
in order to achieve racial diversity, the most recent study of the
ten-percent solution by Marta Tienda and her colleagues shows that
it is even failing public universities as an effective means of
achieving the racial diversity that is lauded by supporters and
critics of affirmative action alike as desirable.
The way that Princeton and other selective universities
use race as one among many criteria, unlike the ten-percent solution,
is in fact “carefully calibrated and narrowly tailored.”
There are no quotas. The Administration’s amicus brief claims
that the Michigan Law School’s use of race as one of many criteria
is a quota system because it results in roughly similar proportions
of minorities each year. But in fact the proportions of groups admitted
and matriculating have varied significantly from one year to the
next. African-Americans in the entering law school class, for example,
have ranged from 21 to 37 over past 9 years. Any statistics course
should tell us that, by considering roughly the same range of qualifications
each year for every applicant in a large pool, the resulting proportions
admitted and accepted of large groups will be quite predictable
from one year to the next because applicant pools generally do not
change radically from one year to the next. The proportion of left-handed,
blond, or blue-eyed students at NYU is likely to be very similar
from one year to the next even though NYU has no left-handed, blond,
or blue-eyed quota. Unlike being left-handed, blond, and blue-eyed,
being African-American is an educational plus in a society where
everyone can learn a lot from an educational environment that is
racially integrated, and where bringing more blacks into leadership
positions has great social value.
The
reason to focus on the educational and social relevancy of race
is that it is the kind of diversity that is most under threat today.
That said, it is equally important to emphasize that the threat
of overturning Bakke is a threat to higher education that extends
to far more than the educational and social relevancy of race or
race-sensitive admissions. Threatened as well by the possibility
that universities will be prohibited from taking race into account
as one among a large number of relevant considerations for admissions
is the principle of academic freedom. What criterion will Courts
decide to restrict next on grounds of equal protection under the
laws? GPA, SAT, geographic residence, gender, alumni status, athletic
ability, musical talent, overcoming of hardship, economic background
(both poor and rich), family fame, sibling enrollment, religion?
All of these factors that are taken into account by various selective
universities, public or private, have as much to do with the way
in which an applicant can contribute to composing a class as to
the isolated merits of individual applicants taken out of any particular
educational context.
To be fair, equal protection under the laws must
permit the use of race as one among other criteria in university
admissions. Prohibiting universities from using race as one among
many criteria is not only unfair, however, it also threatens the
academic freedom of universities to compose educationally and socially
optimal classes. Insisting on race-neutrality but not class-neutrality,
geographic-neutrality, gender-neutrality, or any other number of
other factors that are not narrowly academic both discriminates
against students of color and threatens the academic freedom of
universities.
Constitutional democracy is about being ruled
and ruling. Higher education is about being educated and educating.
None of us ever had a right to be admitted anywhere, regardless
of how we could contribute to and benefit from our education. For
any external authority to tell universities that they must admit
students merely on the basis of GPAs and SAT scores would not only
be unethical and unconstitutional but also irrational from an educational
and social perspective. GPAs and SATs within a wide range predict
nothing beyond freshman year grades. The designers and disseminators
of SATs are among the first to emphasize what a crude and limited
instrument it is. We should be humble about what we know and do
not know about individual qualifications.
The fourth essential freedom that constitutes
academic freedom — which Justice Frankfurter articulated almost
50 years ago and Justice Powell affirmed in the Bakke case (1978) — “the
freedom to decide on academic grounds who may be admitted to study”
is more important today than ever before. If Bakke is overturned,
what criteria of educational and social value will be next? And
what will we say to those students of color who reasonably ask why
so many factors other than GPAs and SATs are considered in admitting
students but their distinctive contribution is ruled out of court,
despite the centrality to our nation’s future of our all better
understanding the role of race.
Educational historians of the future looking back
at American higher education at the turn of the 21st century might
therefore say that, as far as diversity is concerned, it was the
best of times and it was the worst of times. Nine justices of the
Supreme Court will soon make a difference in determining how the
course of the history of higher education in America will work itself
out. Before they decide, it is essential for educators to be as
clear as can be about why diversity matters, and how much it matters
to the future of higher education, our society, and our world.
Once we articulate why diversity matters — that
it is essential to pursuing a more democratic education and a more
democratic society, then we can also better see which dimensions
of diversity count most. Economic and gender diversity are both
essential in higher education but neither is a substitute for racial
diversity, which is equally essential. A vast amount of empirical
evidence demonstrates that race and gender not just poverty matter
in the ways that are relevant to pursuing the educational and social
ends of a constitutional democracy that still negatively stereotypes
people of color.
“When will this argument about racial
diversity end?” a critic might challenge. There has been great
progress in my lifetime, and I have been a beneficiary of the progress.
Referring to the continuing need for affirmative action in higher
education today despite the progress in our lifetimes, our amicus
brief in the Michigan case argues: “If these trends continue,
the interest in a racially diverse student body might gradually
become decoupled from policies that give favorable consideration
to minority race and ethnicity. But hoping that day will come sooner
rather than later cannot be translated into a constitutional imperative
that the nation’s universities act as thought that day has
already arrived.”
In the spirit of helping that day arrive, I have
defended diversity as a means to valuable educational and social
ends, not as an end-in-itself. I have also defended the academic
freedom of universities — the institutional freedom to decide
who to admit — that makes universities themselves diverse. One
of the great assets of the American system of higher education is
its diversity. Diversity within a university’s student body
and diversity among universities are both means to very valuable
educational and social ends. We therefore must not forget diversity.
We must passionately defend it — with discernment.
