Today’s world of higher
education is not especially notable for miracles. But I am happy to report of
one such miracle—the transformation of diversity from an academic liability to
an asset of near incalculable benefit. That this transformation occurred in the
space of a few decades and cost only a few million, makes it especially notable
and gives hope that other miracles may soon appear.
Life Before the Miracle
When I began my university
teaching career at an elite university in the late 1960’s the push for racial
diversity was just beginning. This meant recruiting African American youngsters
from the inner-city, providing extra tutoring during the summer, paying all
their expenses and hiring black bureaucrats to oversee progress.
I cannot say how the experiment
worked elsewhere, but for myself and department colleagues, it was an academic
disaster. These recruits lagged far behind their classmates on every measure of
intellectual proficiency, and those who passed the course usually did thanks to
instructor generosity. Their written work was especially abysmal, and many
proved troublesome students—skipping class with lame excuses, a penchant for
plagiarism, and similar burdensome behaviors.
Matters did not improve over
the next few decades where I spent twenty-eight years at a major state
university. Despite the administration tinkering with recruitment strategies
and investing yet more in remedial tutoring schemes, I saw no academic
improvement. Rare exceptions aside, the “diversity students” struggled and, as
before, I suspect that most survived thanks to more generous grading curves and
dumbed down course requirements.
Particularly exasperating was
recruiting and retaining African American graduate students. Courses requiring
some mastery of statistics and research methods could be especially tough
obstacles and many of these admittees thrashed about when it came time to write
Ph.D. dissertations. In more than a few cases I can personally attest that
overcoming this dissertation hurdle required an “unusual” level of faculty
intervention.
Such under-performance could
hardly be hidden from other students. I could sometimes see how their
classmates smirked when these diversity admittees asked a particularly dumb
question or tried to interject race-related nonsensical points into class
discussion. In one large lecture class a black student adamantly insisted that
the Black Panthers were a non-violent do-gooder specializing in breakfast
programs for school kids. Non-minority students would also hear all the
official campus talk about the latest outreach initiative or upping retention
of these students by offering majors in Black Studies or permitting “blacks
only” student housing.
Whether regularly admitted
students seriously interacted with diversity admittees is an unanswerable
question but I suspect that intellectual back-and-forth was constrained. Campus
self-imposed segregation was everywhere, and I cannot recall seeing any animated
discussions among mixed race groups before or after class. I suspect that if
this interaction did exist, it has dwindled with time given the dangers that
now can result from race-related misunderstandings. Today’s white students know
all about unintentional micro-aggressions and how such conversations can
accidentally bring accusations of offensiveness. Better to keep chit-chat
bland.
If the problems of dealing with
struggling black students were bad enough, the administrative-mandated faculty
diversification was far worse. These were top-down pushes to make numbers and
often included “free money” if the right candidate were hired. The emphasis was
strictly on race, never program needs so zero attention was paid to what a
black job candidate might teach. Who cares if the department already offers two
courses on black politics if a black job candidate could only offer a third
while the position in, say, Asian politics went unfilled.? Nor did anybody
express reservations about the lack of traditional scholarly qualifications,
notably publications in major disciplinary journals. It was just assumed that
affirmative action hires could not be held to high standards. Similarly, given
the intense competition for decent candidates, an attractive black candidate
might be enticed with a well-above market salary, zero teaching load for his
first two years on the job, a generous research and travel budget and other
lures that a white male could never demand.
Perhaps the worst aspect of
this diversification was how it promoted political correctness. Savvy
instructors learned to avoid all sensitive topics lest minority students were
offended and claimed that they could not survive in such a poisonous
environment. Don’t even mention The Bell Curve or hint that racial groups differ in criminality, illegitimacy
etc. etc. Almost overnight, the range of what could be expressed in the
classroom (and pursued in research) drastically narrowed. Science that produced
the “wrong” results automatically became “bad” science.
The very idea of debating the role of culture in economic attainment became
unthinkable thanks to newly arrived diversity.
All in all, other than for the
most zealous egalitarians, this was a failed experiment.
The Miracle
Outside of teaching a few
graduate seminars here in New York, I left the academy in 2002 though I have
tried to keep up with events. It thus came as a great surprise to me that
between my departure and today, the campus has witnessed a Miracle—diversity has
been transformed from a tolerable burden, a rocky initial step in the march
toward racial equality into an immense, widely celebrated benefit.
Skeptics need only search
Google to see the evidence. It would be impossible to summarize this literature
so only a few examples must suffice. According to the research highlighted at
the website Everfi,
diversity enriches a student’s educational experience, improves his or her
communication skills, challenges stereotypes, allows students to see themselves
as leaders and better prepares them for today’s diverse workforce. To quote,
“Ultimately, studies show
that diversity on campus improves ‘intellectual engagement, self-motivation,
citizenship and cultural engagement, and academic skills like critical
thinking, problem solving, and writing – for students of all races. Interacting
with diverse peers outside a classroom setting directly benefits students,
making them better scholars, thinkers, and citizens.’”
Meanwhile the Center for American
Progress (a non-partisan progressive thinktank) provides
ten reasons why diversity is necessary on today’s campus. Among these are that
a diverse campus will reflect America’s shifting demography, help to close
race-related educational gaps, promote a more innovative and competitive
workforce (vital for our global economy), make American firms more profitable,
enhances national security and, lastly because the American public wants campus
diversity.
Hardly surprising, the research
on hiring a diverse faculty is likewise upbeat on its benefits. Typical is
one academic study that
argues that a diverse faculty may be especially valuable for minority students
thanks to having role models who look and sound like them. In addition, all
students will learn how to live in an increasingly diverse world while a
diverse faculty will offer more diverse courses and thus expose all students to
a wider range of ideas, teaching methods and scholarship. A different study demonstrates
that upping faculty diversity will benefit college students since such faculty
interacts more frequently with students than their white counterparts and use a
broader range and more effective mix of pedagogical techniques.
A survey-based study at
two medical schools reported that students believed that having diverse
classmates greatly enhanced the quality of their education and thus supported
current policies of affirmative action. At the risk of beating a dead horse,
one highly scholarly, citation-rich review conclude
that an ethnically diverse campus offer more varied educational experiences
that both enhance learning and prepare these youngster for participation in a
democratic society. And on and on.
These examples illustrate an
overwhelming, uncontested consensus that diversity enhances education. Conceivably,
contrary views exist, but I have yet to encounter a single example in “respectable”
scholarly literature (the only possible exception are the writing of the
non-academic Heather MacDonald).
It is impossible to exaggerate
this alleged transformation—prior to this “miracle” an ill-prepared black
student would likely be judged a liability since he could add little useful to
classroom discussion and often had to be accommodated by lowering academic
standards. Today, by contrast, his very presence helps classmates prepare for a
more heterogeneous world, helps diminish negative race-related stereotypies all
the while boosting US global economic competitiveness. Likewise, while a black
Ph.D. might have once been hired despite his weak academic record, he or she
now too, has become an educational asset by broadening the horizons of his
white colleagues. What is remarkable about these studies is that they derive
from institutions of higher learning and totally, absolutely and categorically
avoid measuring any indicator of intellectual attainment.
This lopsided focus is hardly
inevitable. It would not take much, for example, to assess whether ill-prepared
black students thanks to a new critical mass of fellow students of color
demonstrated higher levels of academic proficiency or now major in tougher
subjects. Unfortunately, in today’s diversity-obsessed world it is more
important that a black instructor convinces other blacks that they, too, can be
professors versus helping them pass Organic Chemistry. No doubt, those
searching for proof regarding the marvelous diversity miracle know full well
that diversity hardly guarantees academic progress, no small matter given the
academic accomplishment is the university’s pre-eminent mission.
Why this dramatic shift? Let me
suggest that this abrupt change can only be explained by the a few-found
ideological orthodoxy, what the Marxist would call the zigs and zags of
history–the Party Line, so to speak.
Stripped of mendacious
rhetoric, college admission with its promise of providing the magical diploma
has become a tool to keep the peace and “promoting diversity” is the least
embarrassing way to acquiesce to these political demands. Further justifying
all those well-paid diversity bureaucrats—surely all their salaries must
be accomplishing something. Yes, diversity admittees may have middling SAT
scores and dreadful high school grades, gravitate to empty-calorie majors and
stifle campus intellectual life, but their very presence on campus, regardless
of classroom or disciplinary accomplishments or fields of study, contributes to
our multicultural society and so they must be admitted. As for all those
talented white (and Asian) males who will never be admitted or hired in a
university, don’t fret—your willingness to step aside for members of
historically under-represented groups is most gracious, and who knows, in a
hundred years there may be campus statutes commemorating your sacrifice.
Today’s diversity mania with
its dumbing down of the humanities and social sciences (and perhaps even the
hard sciences) is, as they say, putting lipstick on a pig. And who cannot adore
such a pig?
