If we were a private school, the debate over the diversity requirement would simply be about its relative merits. Personally, I think it is impossible to teach diversity as a graduation requirement. It is such a complex issue that all that can be taught is a worldview. Everyone has a different concept of what constitutes diversity, be it ethnic, religious, economic, literary, etc. Even when you have courses devoted to discussing different notions of diversity, you still have a philosophical framework with which you approach it.
The role of worldviews
Diversity is a word defined by your worldview. Because the UW is a public school, this issue goes beyond the relative merits of the courses and into the nature of education itself. Every school, every course, every professor — everyone promotes his or her own particular worldview, even at the UW. Something as simple as requiring students to take any of two courses currently listed under the diversity minor becomes inordinately complex when public money is involved. This raises the point that students should individually be in control of their education. Instead of funding schools then, the state should fund students with vouchers they can use to support any school they wish, allowing for greater personalization in education. If we adopted that system, the UW could adopt the proposed requirement because students could choose where their money is going.
“Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum,” said the late University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom in his book, “The Closing of the American Mind.” “It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.”
To subsidize a school is ultimately to subsidize a worldview. Witness the recent battles over Texas schools’ K-12 curriculum, which was blasted by The New York Times for promoting conservative viewpoints in a positive light. It goes both ways, though.
Encouraging worldviews at the UW
The UW is well aware of worldview indoctrination and has been pretty cavalier about it. Making all incoming fall 2009 students buy Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father” was a tactic seemingly designed to both personally enrich the president and campaign within the classroom for him.
In the last campaign cycle, the University of Washington faculty and staff donated $306,345 to political candidates and PACs — $276,602 went to Democrats or self-described left-wing PACs, $22,251 to nonpartisan PACs, and $7,492 to Republicans or right-wing PACs.
This is not left-wing bias, this is the left-wing establishment. Whatever diversity we will learn will be what the left terms as diversity. Even if active proselytizing does not occur, what you view as fact and how you present it is determined by your worldview. If the UW were a private school, this would be perfectly fine, but because we are a public school, we forfeit a lot of our ability to require certain courses.
Discouraging color-blindness
Let’s look at some of the diversity curriculum itself. After many drafts of this article and long discussions with editors and colleagues, I was encouraged to do a few interviews. I first interviewed diversity requirement supporter and BSU senator Tracy Hansen-Lamont. I asked him about some of the things I saw in the proposal materials, such as using the requirement to discourage a color-blind mentality.
One of the reasons Hansen-Lamont gave for taking diversity courses was that the world is a diverse place. I agree with him that in a globalized world, it is valuable to learn about other cultures. From his perspective, color-blindness — which I defined as treating people merely by their words and actions — could be used as a form of racism.
“The thing about color-blindness that’s bad is that it doesn’t recognize diversity,” Hansen-Lamont said. “Being black is a big part of my identity.”
We should judge people by their words and actions, but we shouldn’t ignore their uniqueness as individuals shaped by cultural experiences. This includes not ignoring skin color, Hansen-Lamont told me, since skin color often carries with it a set of experiences.
The second person I interviewed was Wayne Perryman, who has written prolifically on the subject of race and who also has given numerous sensitivity courses. He is also a local inner city black minister, former newspaper publisher, former talk show host and author.
Perryman agreed with Hansen-Lamont that color-blindness can act as a subtle form of racism because, while it seeks not to use ethnicity against someone, a good thing, it often covers up the cultural influences that went into making that person the unique individual that he or she is.
Notice, though, that this discussion about color-blindness is ultimately a discussion about how people should treat each other. When you are looking at influences on an individual, you need an agreed upon framework because people with different worldviews have different opinions about what constitutes acceptable beliefs and behavior. You cannot be indiscriminate, but at a public university, you must seek general student consensus as much as possible. At a private university, this is a lot easier because the university can more easily choose values it wants to encourage.
Implementing a diversity requirement
“I don’t think the universities are capable of doing the topic justice,” Perryman said. “They either promote a political ideology or racism.”
I have to agree with him on that. Since diversity is a word defined by your worldview, you will not be getting diversity with this requirement, you will just be getting a worldview. But I go one step further. Worldview indoctrination is unavoidable in education. This is more obvious with private religious schools that advertise their worldviews. A Catholic school like Christendom College in Virginia teaches from a Catholic perspective and has a core curriculum corresponding to its values. It is impossible to be truly impartial in terms of having a worldview, including whatever worldview is encouraged by the diversity requirement.
It is OK to have classes focused on the subject of diversity as long as they are not required. I think it is a great idea to learn about other cultures and languages, and this is something students should do — but at a public university, students should take these classes on their own initiative.
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