Opinion
Diversity deserves attention at UW
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I feel that Sam Clegg's opinion column ("Don't bother with diversity positions," Dec. 5) necessitated a response representing the student body that does care deeply about diversity and racial equality at the University of Wisconsin and in America. First, Mr. Clegg's claim that the Office of Diversity and Climate be "put to rest once and for all" is ignorant of the barriers preventing racial equality from occurring. The Office of Diversity and Climate is an attempt at fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for its student body. When the challenge of maintaining diversity is retention of students of color, a substantial effort to make sure that all students feel comfortable in this school's environment is absolutely fundamental.
The allegation that the vice provost for diversity and climate's role is "to create an environment in which the only differences between us that matter are skin deep" is entirely ignorant of the program's intent. In fact, the office's goal is to remedy our society in which skin matters enormously to one's job opportunity, housing options, level of education and likelihood of spending time in jail. To ignore that race matters in American society is to severely inhibit the ability to overcome vast inequality and barriers to reaching a democratic society. Therefore, I think the "morality" of this position is clear.
Furthermore, affirmative action can have a negative short-term effect on white students. However, this is a small price our generation must pay for the shortcomings of previous generations in which people of color suffered mandated racism on behalf of the federal, state and local governments. Not only that, but racism, overt and institutionalized, continues its legacy today. I cannot think of any other plausible answer to this problem other than programs dedicated to equaling the playing field for those who clearly start out much lower than whites on the sole basis of their skin color.
Moreover, racial lines are not "imaginary" and the school is attempting to address this issue with honesty and integrity. Maybe someday you will meet someone who is more different from you than "a white, libertarian male with similar religious beliefs" and have the opportunity to experience a different reality of life in America.
Abbey Kornhauser UW sophomore, political science akorhauser@wisc.ed
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I’m in a department where white males are about fifteen percent of the population. Yet there are special programs for women and anyone non-white. I think that the diversity office has served its purpose and is a dinosaur, and it should be replaced by a truly inclusive peer mentoring system and a discrimination reporting system through the Dean of Students.
Amen.
Will the Office of Diversity and Climate be working to see that anyone can join groups which try to exclude anyone not of a particular slice of diversity?
“I’m in a department where white males are about fifteen percent of the population.”
Yes, and yours is obviously the only department in this university.
But, what about at this school? There is very little representation of minorities in the student body. Should we get rid of programs to increase this number!? What department are you in because its one that isn’t representative of the rest of the school?
THANK YOU! I am so glad someone has addressed that article because I believe Sam was completely ignorant!
A vast majority of readers misinterpret the message Sam was trying to convey. Sam is not opposed to diversity or racial equality; he merely presents a different perspective than conventional wisdom (how dare he think differently!) on how to achieve them. He argues that diversity is much more than just the color of your skin, its all of your experiences and ideas you have that make you different from everyone else. He advocates achieving racial equality by not treating people differently in the admissions process based solely on their race. I think the fact that Sam wants to treat everyone equally regardless of their race and not spend millions of dollars trying to promote the idea that everyone is only as different as the color of their skin makes him very far from ignorant.
More diversity is absolutely needed:
At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are “the third group,” far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right.”
I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I’ve been on the “far right” as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.
All these views — commonplace in American society and among the political class — are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.
A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”