Learning From Diversity

I bet you couldn't find an admissions office in the Ivy League that refrains from boasting of its commitment to "diversity." Beyond the ivory towers, politicians may rage over the future of affirmative action, but within the Ivy League, the D-word remains all the rage.

Diversity has become such a trite phrase in the congenially liberal environment of academia that I believe President Neil L. Rudenstine's surprise was genuine when some members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last week harshly criticized him for entering Harvard into the national debate.

In his recent report on diversity, Rudenstine was not trying to write his own politics into Harvard's history so much as find the now ubiquitous language of diversity within Harvard's commitment to excellence. Despite the political debate in Washington, the president can be forgiven for assuming there was little controversial in rehashing this campus mantra in his report on "Diversity and Learning."

But conservative gadfly Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 was less forgiving. Instead of soft praise from the Faculty, Rudenstine quickly found himself on the defensive as Mansfield led a small group of conservatives in attacking the president for committing Harvard's prestige to the defense of affirmative action.

In all fairness, Rudenstine's critics have not been entirely just. True, Rudenstine's attempt to link the diversity of yesterday to that of today speaks, perhaps unconsciously, from the liberal side of the political debate. But the 58-page report is a lucidly written study of the long-standing movement within Harvard to diversify the student body for its own good. In this sense, the report's novelty is to show that "diversity" has a link with the past that pre-dates the current political clime.

Rudenstine's critics, such as Kenan Professor of Government Mansfield, recognize the value of diversity in intellectual discourse. Rudenstine's report cites both John Milton and John Stuart Mill, who argued for diversity of opinion as a necessity in the pursuit of truth.

Mansfield speaks with approval of the attempts of President Charles W. Eliot, class of 1853, to diversity almost a century ago for the sake of excellence at the same time as he criticizes today's policies that seek such diversity at the expense of excellence. Mansfield argues that Rudenstine deliberately avoids a frank discussion of the lowered admissions standards required by current affirmative action policies.

Rudenstine's report does fail to take into account the problem inherent in the use of group identities to claim diversity. Diversity, as understood by the men Rudenstine cites, is the representation of varied intellectual perspectives, which only crudely conform to the group categories now used as shorthand for "representation."

At the same time, Mansfield's conclusion that Harvard has bowed to "the ascendancy of self-esteem" (what his comrade-in-arms Allan Bloom once diagnosed as the "closing of the American mind"), overstates the extent to which diversity has forced Harvard to compromise its commitment to excellence. Even while placing a premium on diversity, Harvard's admissions standards remain the most competitive in the nation--for all of its students.

Affirmative action is on more solid ground within the university than without because of the value that diversity provides to the learning experience. Diversity remains an important component of the Harvard education as it has for a century.

It's true that by pursuing affirmative action, Harvard undertakes a commitment to diversity that extends beyond equality of opportunity narrowly construed. Yet it does so in an attempt to affirmatively contribute to remedying the social and economic barriers that tend to limit opportunity for some minority groups.

Such a policy is no doubt a political decision, and the pursuit of diversity as a vehicle for social change--even within a narrow band of excellence--is an innovation. Yet as Rudenstine argues, it is a choice not without echoes in Harvard's longstanding pursuit of diversity.

Steven A. Engel's column appears on alternate Wednesdays.