The Art of Diversity - racial diversity in schools - Interview

Black Issues in Higher Education, August 31, 2000

WASHINGTON

Dr. Arthur E. Levine is in a pretty enviable position. As president of Columbia University's Teacher College, he sits at the helm of a Harlem, N.Y.-based institution steeped in its legacy of inclusion. Back in the 1940s, '50s '60s, Southern states burdened with shackles of segregation readily paid Black teachers to go out of state to get advanced credentials rather than integrate graduate programs at their traditionally White schools. Teachers College welcomed these teachers and administrators with open arms.

As a result, a generation of Black Ivy league-trained leaders were made available to to the Black public schools in the South. Black students were exposed to some great educators, and the college gained a reputation as a haven for Blacks and other minorities.

Today, the challenges are very different. Things are not seen in Black and White terms. Southern schools are desegregated. The vexing issue not only at Columbia but also throughout the nation, is achieving substantive diversity.

Levine has taken on the task of encouraging not only the Teachers College, but also the entire higher education community into fulfilling diversity's unfinished agenda and its unrealized promise with his recent call for a higher education diversity task force. BI Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Frank L. Matthews recently spoke with Levine about diversity, school vouchers, recruiting new teachers and his latest published work, Diversity on Campus.

BI: You are seen as a throw back to the earlier liberal progressive agenda. You even support affirmative action. Do you take a lot of heat on this issue?

AL: No. Not in the Jewish community and not in the academic community.

BI: So you would agree that the Black-Jewish rift over affirmative action has been blown out of proportion?

AL: I think that's true. There have been some very visible people who were Jewish who have opposed affirmative action. But in the same way, Ward Connerly is not typical of Blacks in America.

BI: Would you say that there is a major difference between procedural diversity and substantive diversity? How would you delineate the difference?

AL: I think there is a significant difference between the two. I don't know many universities that don't go through the procedures, long and elaborate procedures. But if one looks at the composition of the professoriate, senior administrative positions on most campuses don't reflect having gone through much of a procedure. They still look predominately White and male.

BI: Most people will say that they genuinely make a good-faith effort.

AL: I think that one of the things that happens is that in order to get under-represented minorities into a search, one has to work really, really hard here. It's more than putting an ad in Black Issues, it's more than putting an ad in The Chronicle. What it really adds up to is personally calling people on the phone. I'm one of the people who haven't done extraordinarily well. I know the theory, and I know the practice, and I know I've tried hard, and I haven't succeeded every time I've wanted to.

BI: There seems to be a reluctance on the part of college administrators to take on that in loco parentis role and be intrusive into the lives of the students, especially around the social aspects of diversity. What do they need to do to overcome that hesitance?

AL: Colleges and universities are afraid of in loco parentis for a variety of reasons. One is there are legal ramifications. If you don't know and you don't look, you are less likely to be sued. Another rationale, I think, is that we live in an age in which all kinds of values are seen as equal. Therefore, there is less rationale on lots of campuses for in loco parentis than there once had been. So that, I think it's not only issues of diversity, I think it's every issue that exists on college campuses that administrators are pulling back from. On this one, I also think that on the issue of diversity, what makes it difficult is that the issue is so hard to talk about on college campuses. I've said in the past that the dirty words on college and university campuses now aren't four letters anymore. They're at least six letters. They're racist, sexist and homophobic, and nobody wants to be called those things. So what everybody does is duck on this issue.

BI: Is that acquiescence that this thing is just too tough? Do you think it's really that tough?

AL: I think it's really, really tough, even when they talk about it from a variety of different perspectives. I was interviewing focus groups of students. We were doing a study of American college students, and we surveyed 9,100 students and 272 student affairs officers. And each of the groups is fairly diverse. Diverse in race, diverse in age, diverse in gender. So we were sitting there talking to the students, and the interviews last about two to three hours. About three-quarters of the way through the interview the topic is: "Tell me about your sex life." And students would tell us intimate details of their sex lives. The next question is: "talk about the racial climate on your campus." All of a sudden, what you watch happen is the smiles disappear, arms cross over chests, legs that may have been spread suddenly close up and there is absolute silence around the table. People aren't looking at each other; they are looking at the table. I would wait and I'd repeat the question. One day, I waited two minutes. Do you know how long two minutes is when you are sitting in a group like that? Students would not talk about it.