Pursuing diversity, campuses divide

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 15, 1996 | by Carmine Sarracino

Looking through the February 1996 issue of the Modern Language association's Job Information List, or JIL, I find 14 positions advertised in my field, American literature. Of those 14 positions, 11, or almost 80 percent, specifically request a specialist in African-American literature or Latino-American literature, or seek candidates in "gay/lesbian studies," "minority studies" or "gender studies." Fortunately, I am perusing the ads out of curiosity rather than need. I am a white heterosexual male.

Of the three ads remaining from the 14 in the February JIL, Otterbein College's ad concludes, "Women and minorities are encouraged to apply." Hmm. Does that suggest that white men are discouraged? I suspect so. East Carolina University is "an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action University." Only Cedar Crest College offers me real hope, as they end their ad simply "EOE" - equal-opportunity employer. How succinctly that states a sane and fair hiring policy.

The smugness and muddle-headedness of some ads infuriate me, even though my search is not real. (Imagine if it were!) For instance, Indiana University East is "committed to enhancing the cultural and gender diversity of the campus. Applications from persons who will enhance this diversity are especially encouraged." Tell me, how is publishing this statement fundamentally different from hanging out the infamous shingle: "No Irish Need Apply"? "Males," I suppose, must be added in place of "Irish."

West Washington University pontificates: "We seek candidates who will provide cultural and experiential diversity to the department. We will make a special effort to recruit candidates from underrepresented groups... " Their ad concludes with this politically correct, utterly goofy catalog of the underrepresented: "We urge people of color, women, Vietnam-era and disabled veterans, and persons with disabilities to apply."

Let's assume the unlikely: that the West Washington University English department is composed of upper-middle-class white males. How significantly will diversity be enhanced, for instance, by adding a male "of color" who, as the son of a doctor, grew up in the same comfortable suburbs as they, attending a prep school and Cornell? Suppose their selection, whatever color, went to Vietnam where, like many veterans, he sat in a desk job for a year? Alcoholism specifically is included as a "disability" in the relevant federal laws: Will adding one (or one more?) alcoholic to the faculty serve the principle of diversity at West Washington?

This kind of social engineering - even if genuine in its intentions - is fundamentally silly. It rests on fuzzy and wrongheaded premises. For instance, if diversity is the goal, what exactly is the ideal mix? Is one disabled veteran necessary or sufficient? If she's an African-American lesbian, can you just hire her and call the whole thing done?

But shouldn't quality rather than diversity count most in hiring? Excellence in higher education demands, first of all, the best and brightest faculties. Without discrimination skin colors will vary. And people with the same skin color also will vary.

I am particularly disturbed, in this connection, by the label "white." Are whites all alike? Is that view not a racial stereotype as foolish as any? Is an Italian-American the same as an Irish-American? Are European ethnic groups indistinguishable? If I applied to West Washington University, my application as a white male would be dismissed summarily, and they would never know just how "underrepresented" a group I would in fact have represented.

I grew up poor in Providence, R.I., in the notorious neighborhood of Federal Hill. The video of Federal Hill, a recent film, reads on its box:, "Welcome to the mean streets of Federal Hill... a mob-infested neighborhood." I remember the Hill in many ways, most of them positive, but it was definitely a troubled and at times violent place. Talking with my sister when I was about 25 (after having exchanged my surroundings, astonishingly, for Ann Arbor, Mich., and graduate study) I realized that most of the guys Id grown up with on the Hill, some of them good friends, were dead, in prison or on the needle. Would the West Washington English department see any "experiential diversity" here?

As for "cultural diversity," I grew up bilingual. At home I spoke Italian with my grandparents, who spoke no English, and English (laced with Italian words and phrases) with my mother, sisters and friends. I played boccie rather than baseball, because my grandfather tended two boccie courts in the Italian-American club he ran - and there was no place to play baseball. Again, to the West Washington English department: Would I be a carbon copy of your privileged whites?

My objection is not to diversity but to a narrow political agenda which, cloaked as diversity and "multiculturalism," manifests itself in the curriculum and weakens the quality of education. We now find courses in, for instance, "queer studies." Indeed, the University of Iowa in 1994 hosted "InQueery, InTheory, Indeed: the Sixth North American Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Conference." Many universities now have gender-studies requirements (requirements, mind you) which include courses in "queer studies." Stanford University has offered "Black Hair as Culture and History," a course which listed on two dates of its syllabus, "Visits from Hairstylists."