The Educational Power of our Human Diversity
 

 by Gordon E. Michalson, Jr.

President, New College of Florida

Op-Ed published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Feb. 11, 2003

Lost in the current debate about affirmative action policies in admissions at the University of Michigan is a basic fact of life within higher education: College admissions is an inherently discriminatory process. College officials are charged with the obligation to decide which applicants will both benefit from and contribute to the educational life at a given institution. Any school alert to the fact that its graduates will go on to live and work in a world defined largely by human differences will reasonably conclude that a broad representation of those differences on campus will be educationally productive. The real issue is not one of affirmative action at all, but of educational quality.

The educational impact on campus of multiple perspectives cutting across racial, ethnic, gender and religious lines is both subtle and powerful. In my own academic field of philosophy of religion, for example, major authors in the past have often made far-reaching claims about human nature and about the human condition generally. These authors assume that a certain sort of experience is a universal norm and, thus, the appropriate basis for their sweeping claims.

Yet it can and does happen that some students in the class – often from an underrepresented population – will suddenly interject that they don’t see their experience described in the “classic” book under discussion. Such interjections open up fresh and challenging questions for animated discussion, the very thing a teacher is aiming for.

Could it be that a famous author’s depiction of the “universal” human condition merely reflects the narrow concerns of a thin slice of humanity? Is there anything about humanity that is “universal”? Do the so-called “great books” gain their eminent standing partly by ignoring the perspectives of those who would call their “greatness” into question? In a world filled with human beings facing the grueling daily task of putting food on the table for half-starved children – people who will never read books dealing with such abstractions as “the meaning of life” – what is the real authority of such books? What does this situation say about the social and economic status of those writing these books?

These are educationally valuable questions, of the sort that enhance critical thinking skills, generate avenues of debate connecting past and present, and increase the self-confidence of the students moved to ask them. The point, obviously, is that such questions are far more likely to be raised and discussed in a culturally diverse setting – which is to say that a less diverse setting will suffer some degree of educational impoverishment. Responsible educators at leading schools are keenly aware of this fact, which leads to careful attention to student recruitment and admissions. Whatever the legal details of the University of Michigan case may be, I keep coming back to the point that it is the responsibility of the educators to create settings where a full range of human voices enjoys representation. In principle, a void here is just as problematic as, say, the absence of mathematics or history courses.

A version of this point has always been true, but it has never been so timely or critical as today. Truisms about our shrinking global community have assumed a much sharper edge since the terrorist attacks, and American colleges and universities face new responsibilities in connection with offering the kind of higher education that will strengthen our democratic institutions. Failure to cultivate and sustain diverse populations in our colleges and universities will only perpetuate the deepest sorts of misunderstandings and conflicts, while forfeiting our best chance for discovering our common humanity – which we can do only if we can respect and celebrate our differences.