Diversity and Learning: “A Defining Moment”
Growth is rarely an easy experience. But it is a necessary dimension of life’s rhythms. In adolescence, confident children transition to insecure young adulthood; they outgrow their clothing, their self-images, sometimes even their bodies. Hermit crabs face a similar challenge: but instead of outgrowing their garments, they outgrow their shells, organic casings that provide shelter under which they can thrive. Children, of course, adjust. So too do hermit crabs—but not without initial discomfort as they shift to more spacious shells.
Caryn McTighe Musil, AAC&U vice president for diversity, equity, and global initiatives, likened diversity practitioners to these hermit crabs as she addressed the 2006 Diversity and Learning conference. Diversity education has outgrown its frameworks. Practitioners hesitate to leave the “structural, political, and intellectual shells” they have so painfully crafted. The diversity movement, Musil says, has reached a “defining moment.” Like hermit crabs, diversity practitioners must choose: remain cramped inside the casements of established structures, or embrace growth and move toward new forms of engagement.
When Musil suggests that diversity educators need to shed their figurative shells, she speaks specifically of three distinct movements within diversity education: U.S. diversity, global learning, and civic engagement. Each movement, she notes, has unique strengths, and each movement has reasonable reservations about collaboration. Individuals in different movements fear that alliances will sap their resources or undercut their missions. In collaboration, however, these movements can create frameworks that are ultimately “more encompassing” than those of any single movement. They can accelerate their collective growth and impact by stepping beyond the casings that have constrained them.
As Musil recalled, diversity education has always been dynamic and evolving. The diversity education movement has, among other things, moved from a desire to advance social justice to seeing diversity as a means to promote academic excellence, civic learning, and engagement. The projects and theories presented at the 2006 Diversity and Learning conference, many of which are revisited in this issue of Diversity Digest, illustrate this process of change and renewal. They also illustrate the need to celebrate what Musil calls the “remarkable even if insufficient progress” diversity educators have made—even as the next generation of diversity education emerges.
Diversity Digest, too, has reached a point of transition. The educational initiatives we have promoted for over a decade have expanded beyond our structural boundaries. The next issue of Diversity Digest will introduce a new format, designed to incorporate the distinct and interrelated movements of civic engagement, global learning, and U.S. diversity. Growth, indeed, is rarely an easy experience—but we believe it will reward us with more spacious architecture for doing our transformative work.
"When black students come together, the assumption is often that they are being separatist," said Karlene Burrell-McRae, director of the Makuu Black Cultural Resource Center, which organized the black graduation celebration at Penn. "But the reality is that they are full members of the university community who take on responsibility for contributing to their community while also contributing to the larger community."
Ajay T. Nair, director of the Pan-Asian American Community House and director of Asian American studies at Penn, called the separate celebrations a way to honor students who might otherwise be overlooked. Earlier this month, the house hosted a 150-guest celebration for the Asian graduates. "We are celebrating the graduation of students who have a specific interest," he said. "It probably is not realistic to expect these students to be recognized in the larger context of the university." But some opponents of affirmative action argue that although many of the nation's colleges now have substantial minority populations, those students often operate in parallel worlds that are frequently defined by race or ethnicity.
They attend the same classes, these opponents say, but they often are members of separate fraternities, sororities and cultural centers, they study in separate groups, they eat at segregated dining tables and they unwind at separate parties. Ward Connerly, a member of the University of California Board of Regents and a leading opponent of affirmative action, called separate graduation ceremonies part of a well-intentioned but counterproductive approach to diversity. "These celebrations are part of a larger context of cultural centers, black orientations, black studies, black housing," he said.
"They are part of an infrastructure of programs aimed at making students feel welcome. The problem is that this whole entourage of efforts has formed to isolate students in cultural ghettos." Surveys have found that students are no more likely to closely engage one another across racial lines when they finish college than when they arrive. The National Survey of Black Student Engagement released last fall found that 50 percent of college freshmen reported "often" having serious conversations with a student of another race or ethnicity.
The same survey found that 49 percent of seniors reported the same level of interracial dialogue. With a freshman class last year that was 43 percent minority, the University of Pennsylvania has a long history of supporting racial diversity and allowing students to gather in culturally and racially separate support centers. There is the Hillel House, a cultural center for Jewish students, the Newman Center, which promotes Catholic traditions, and the W.E.B. DuBois College House, which holds black cultural forums and houses about a quarter of the university's black students, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Penn officials say that type of diversity is indispensable to the learning environment at any world-class academic institution.
"Our mission, at its core, is to educate. And we believe that homogeneity stifles learning," said a statement on affirmative action issued by Judith Rodin, president of the University of Pennsylvania, and James S. Riepe, chairman of the university's board of trustees. Makuu, the black student center at Penn, teaches study skills and publishes a directory of black faculty members and a black resource guide to the university. "The students describe Makuu as a safe space," said director Burrell-McRae. "It is a place where they don't have to explain who they are."
And for the past two years, it has hosted black graduation celebrations. The cost of the celebration is negligible: about $2,000, mainly for kente cloths and a sumptuous buffet. Penn is paying for the celebration, as many schools do. For the students, it is one of the high points of their senior year. "Being at Penn has not been easy for me," said Nicole Andrewin, 21, an accounting major who helped plan the celebration. "Penn can be a place where you can more easily get lost if you're not in the majority. This celebration is a way for us to say to each other, 'Congratulations, we made it.' "
