The Diversity Project:Institutionalizing Multiculturalism or Managing Differences?

Institutions embrace diversity-in theory. But they don't do much to implement it.

By Evelyn Hu-DeHart

Eventually, "diversity" came to represent all these interrelated, theoretically mutually reinforcing initiatives aimed at unbolting the gates of academe to the historically excluded and underrepresented. Understanding that the goal of these efforts was to redistribute resources in higher education, many stakeholders correctly viewed diversity as a political project.

The argument that a good education opens doors to better opportunities in life and work is powerful and persuasive to all Americans, majority and minority alike. It is therefore not surprising that civil rights leaders mounted a concerted assault on the nation's educational system. They enjoyed their first success with the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which challenged racial segregation in the public schools by exposing the fallacy of the "separate but equal" principle underlying legal apartheid. By the late 1960s, the campaign had moved on to higher education, demanding equal access for all, regardless of race, gender, or class. The diversity project that ensued promised to deliver higher education as the first truly democratic, nondiscriminatory American institution.

So far, the project has seen its greatest progress among students, but our colleges and universities cannot claim full credit. Simply put, a demographic imperative is at work, the result of renewed immigration to the United States from 1965 onward, with most new immigrants coming from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Once in this country, they swelled the ranks of Americans covered by the diversity rubric and aggressively pursued education as the single most effective means to mobility and integration into U.S. society. Demographers confidently project that by 2050, today's "minorities" will be the numerical majority; they already are in California. The Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California have become "majority-minority" institutions (meaning that white students no longer constitute the numerical majority).

If our rapidly changing demographics have functioned as a natural force driving student diversity, no similar phenomenon has propelled faculty diversity forward, at least not for faculty members of color. The advancement of white women has been more impressive and measurable; for them, race and class privileges converge to ameliorate the disadvantages of gender. By contrast, progress for faculty members of color, both men and women, is severely hampered because it relies on the formulation of new policies. The implementation of these policies depends on the willingness of current power holders-most of whom are middle class, white men-to give up some of their hegemony.

For the faculty, it is not mere diversity in representation that is at stake; it is also control of the curriculum. In other words, carefully regulating faculty diversity limits the extent of curricular transformation. Close observers of diversity in higher education report that established departments-especially those at elite public and private research universities-rarely diversify their faculty voluntarily; instead, they do so sporadically and reluctantly and only when given an extra "target of opportunity" line. And all too often, they fail to mentor the faculty of color they do hire, effectively abandoning them to failure and despair. Realizing the original antiracist promise of diversity demands faculty commitment; for the most part, faculty have opted out of that role.

Meanwhile, deans, provosts, chancellors, presidents, and other high academic administrators silently aid and abet the faculty in not committing to the project, because most of them have bailed out, too. Many administrators render diversity into mush by an overly generalized discourse about it that carries no concrete meaning. For example, a finalist for the presidency of a public research university commented in the June 22, 2000, issue of the Sunday Camera (Boulder, Colo.): "Diversity is increasingly important. The more diverse an educational experience is for everyone, the better prepared they are for the work force." The candidate gives us little to argue about, but not much to think about, either-and certainly nothing to act on.

Different Direction

Take, for example, the diversity plan for my campus, issued in 1994. It begins with this declaration of commitment to diversity: "We are committed to making the University of Colorado at Boulder a community in which diversity is a fundamental value." It continues with an astounding definition of diversity: "People are different and the differences among them are what we call diversity." (Emphasis added.) The plan defines "differences" with a simple laundry list that includes, but is "not necessarily limited to, ethnicity, race, gender, age, class, sexual orientation, religion, and physical abilities."

These differences are described as "natural," hence normal and fixed; their main role is to provide positive experiences: "Diversity is a natural and enriching hallmark of life." (Emphasis added.) The plan advises all of us who are different to learn to get along; we must help to create a "climate of healthy diversity," in which "people value individual and group differences, respect the perspectives of others, and communicate openly." In other words, diversity means good manners, now called civility, another key component of the corporate model that has pervaded our campuses.

Nowhere does this definition state, or even hint or imply, that differences are socially and historically constructed and hierarchically arranged. Nor does it allow that most differences carry real and differential meanings regarding power and privilege. This corporate model lays the entire burden on individuals and their attitude and behavior, while absolving the institution of any responsibility for dealing with itself. It does so by studiously avoiding discussion of the structural inequalities that some of the itemized differences embody and convey, by failing to distinguish between individual and group differences, and by stressing the role of civility above all else in creating a diverse environment.

Administrators and faculty can safely put diversity out of mind, having thus proclaimed their commitment to it through a statement that contains no plans to implement concrete structural changes. The statement threatens no one, excludes no claimant to being "different," and thus offends no one. (The laundry list is, after all, elastic and can stretch out indefinitely to incorporate all those individuals or groups who express a desire to be officially noted as different.)

Given our rapidly changing demographics, students of color will continue to arrive on campuses on their own steam. The faculty will remain predominantly white and mostly male, although white women will continue to move quickly into the faculty ranks and join the mainstream. White women provosts at leading research universities, including Ivy League institutions, are not rarities these days.

Despite cries of foul play by cultural rightists, the curriculum has remained firmly under the control of the mainstream faculty. Only that knowledge produced under their rigid guidelines and watchful eyes counts as legitimate and valid. A few stars circling the elite academic orbit notwithstanding, most faculty of color toil for lower wages and under less optimal work conditions than their majority counterparts. Many of those who are the lone token representative of "diversity" in their respective departments find themselves isolated and marginalized.

Ethnic Studies

Thirty years after its founding, the field of ethnic studies finds itself in a paradoxical situation, boasting some long-established programs and departments, yet intellectually marginalized. Its necessity in the academy is touted, but its scholarly merits are often ignored. In the wake of student activism in the late sixties, administrators acceded to the creation of ethnic studies programs as "fire insurance" to placate and appease militant students they did not know how to handle.

Some large campuses, such as the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Colorado at Boulder, promoted comparative race and ethnic studies from the beginning, but most campuses organized ethnic studies around a single focus, creating interdisciplinary programs such as black, African American, Afro-American, or Africana studies; Chicano, Puerto Rican, or Latino studies; American Indian or Native American studies; and Asian American studies.

In the years since the field's founding, campus administrators have embraced "multiculturalism" and set out determinedly to diversify everything they could identify: the student body, the staff, the faculty, and the curriculum. By the end of the twentieth century, however, the field found itself seen but not heard, with its scholars sometimes treated like unemancipated children or colonial subjects lacking full citizenship rights. Not surprisingly, students have once again started to demonstrate for the creation or enhancement of ethnic studies on their campuses.

The very success of ethnic studies appears to have brought about a backlash. This reaction comes not only from the highly contested arena of cultural politics-from the likes of the National Association of Scholars-but also from institutional forces that seek to weaken the programs they created. Why is ethnic studies beleaguered even as it continues to spread on U.S. campuses? Why is it both promoted and undermined?

On most campuses, administrators have denied ethnic studies the one academic currency that it most needs: recognition as a legitimate scholarly field that constructs, disseminates, and imparts knowledge in a distinctive way. They accomplish this denial mainly by withholding respect for the work of ethnic studies scholars, whose approach to scholarship they do not fully comprehend. Ethnic studies scholars perceive as their primary responsibility interrogating any and all received wisdom-particularly those truths presented as universal without regard to the context or perspectives of the people generating them. Equally important is demonstrating alternative ways to construct knowledge, so as to redefine the nature of knowledge and how it is used to understand the physical world and human condition.

Most campus administrators know they need ethnic studies, yet they fear the field. They need it because ethnic studies is the surest way to demonstrate commitment to diversity. It immediately puts color into the curriculum, and its largely nonwhite faculty promotes faculty diversity more rapidly than hiring in traditional disciplinary departments. A few elite universities with prodigious resources, including prominent Ivy League institutions, have tried to achieve instantaneous multicultural credibility by hiring an academic star or two to launch, with appropriate fanfare, a high-profile department, center, or institute.

But administrators also seem to distrust ethnic studies. Once they have established an ethnic studies program and taken public relations credit for doing so, they often refuse to build it up. They appear to fear strengthening a force they never really wanted to create-a critical mass of free-thinking, independent-minded faculty of color with an intellectual base of their own. Most deans and provosts have academic roots in traditional disciplines and have never bothered to become familiar with the knowledge produced by ethnic studies scholars. Little wonder, then, that few of them identify collegially with ethnic studies faculty or intellectually with ethnic studies scholarship.

The undermining of ethnic studies has taken shape with alarming consistency across the country. Common practices include installing weak and pliable program directors and department chairs, sometimes after rejecting strong scholars selected by the faculty. They also involve refusing to hire more than a handful of full-time faculty members in an ethnic studies department and then swelling its ranks with part-time professors or non-ethnic-studies-oriented personnel who may then be given voting rights to dilute the strength of the legitimate, full-time ethnic studies faculty.

Sometimes, administrations will separate the research and teaching components of a program by, for example, setting up distinct units for research and instruction. In other instances, they may deny ethnic studies faculty control over an ethnic studies research center. These administrative decisions can fatally weaken the legitimacy of ethnic studies in research universities.

Administrators occasionally employ divide-and-conquer tactics to destroy solidarity and marginalize individuals, who may then leave ethnic studies to join another department. Some administrators have allowed non-ethnic-studies departments to set up course offerings that duplicate those in ethnic studies. Others have counted minority hires in mainstream departments against promised positions in ethnic studies, whether or not those faculty members define their work around communities of color and ethnic studies concerns.

Although most deans and provosts would not think of staffing a new field of study entirely with untenured junior faculty, many do not hesitate to do precisely that to new ethnic studies programs. Perhaps the most divisive move of all is to divert all multicultural resources to one program, typically to a black studies program established early on in direct response to the civil rights movement, while fending off demands from an increasingly diverse student body to support a broader definition of ethnic studies that includes Latino and Latin studies, Asian American studies, American Indian studies, and comparative race and ethnic studies.

It is also problematic when administrators delay approval for degree programs in ethnic studies even when a solid faculty is in place and many students indicate interest in majoring or minoring in the field. Not surprisingly, many of these same administrators postpone giving ethnic studies departmental status, thus denying it the autonomy, institutional basis, and permanent budget that other fields enjoy.

During at least the past five years, we have seen organized demonstrations on behalf of ethnic studies by a rainbow coalition of students on campuses across the country. Asian American and Latino students, because of their rapidly rising numbers on campuses, have been the most visible among leaders and participants in these waves of protests. By their activism, they seek to inform elders in the administration and the faculty that they, at least, have gone beyond seeing America only through black and white lenses.

When students of color organize politically to press for ethnic studies, they usually do not do so at the behest of faculty members in ethnic studies; indeed, such faculty members are almost nonexistent on some of the campuses that have witnessed the loudest demonstrations. Many of these students see themselves as engaged in a form of antiracist, anticolonial struggle, not unlike the massive protests against South African apartheid a generation ago. For similar reasons, progressive white students often join the struggle to help ethnic studies achieve legitimacy at their institutions. All these students understand what most administrators, white faculty, and the media have failed to grasp-that ethnic studies is not a minority program for minorities only, and it is no longer confined to black studies.

It is ironic indeed that these noisy students aggressively pushing for profound and meaningful curricular changes are precisely the people that colleges and universities have been actively recruiting in the name of diversity. The campus diversity plan, however, provides no blueprint on how to address the needs and interests of these students once they are let in, other than to exhort them to tolerate difference and practice civility. But ethnic studies activists, precisely by abandoning the mode of behavior so fervently pressed on them by administrators, serve notice that they do not buy into the corporate model of diversity; they reject token gestures in the curriculum that fail to challenge the entrenched Eurocentric model or broaden the traditional black-white racial formation.

So what is the problem with corporate or liberal multiculturalism, as practiced on our campuses? Simply put, it does not address the question of power and structural inequality. Differences are not differentiated; the sources and causes of these differences are never discussed, interrogated, or articulated, leaving the impression that they are just "out there." They materialize somehow, outside of any context. No historically or socially constructed categories of inequality or systems of hierarchy, racism, or institutional discrimination are specified. In short, corporate and liberal multiculturalism consigns the "other" to recognizable standards of difference but fails to question the power relations that define for the "others" how and why they are different.

That is, the "managing differences" model of diversity does not seriously question the status quo. The "ethnic" remain peripheral, and only those at the center of privilege have the power to elude the stamp and odor of multiculturalism; they are not on the laundry list of "differences" that need to be managed. This myopia has blinded institutional leaders to the changing nature and dynamics of American diversity and reduced all "others" to the same difference. Thus the diversity project as we know it on our campuses is complicit in perpetuating the racial order as historically constructed.

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