CON STATEMENT: WHY VOTE NO
A “ghettoization”effect
The proposed requirement is supposed to provide
our students “with the ability to understand the perspectives of others whose
views, backgrounds, and experiences may differ from their own.” To that end, the diversity courses were to “substantially
address conditions, experiences, perspectives, and/or representations of at least two groups using difference
frames that include but are not limited to race, ethnicity, gender,
socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, language,
nationality, citizenship status and/or place of origin.”[1] The aim of the two-group rule was to ensure
that the diversity courses would have a relatively broad focus. But the report of the Diversity Initiative Implementation
Committee makes it clear that in practice many courses that focus on the
experience of just one identity group would fulfill the requirement.[2]
The gutting of the two-group rule is a serious
matter in its own right. Indeed, it
makes some opponents suspect that the requirement, if adopted, would be
implemented in a way that reflects the ideological agenda of the “diversity”
lobby. But many opponents also believe it
will have one major and under-appreciated effect. Many students would probably end up taking courses
associated with their own identity group.
As it is, students enrolling in such courses tend disproportionately to be
from the corresponding identity group. And
it is important to remember that the vast majority of our undergraduates come
from such groups. White Non-Hispanics
from the United States currently comprise 27% of our undergraduate body. Of that group, more than half are women. Of the remainder, many belong to various
identity groups (Gays, Jews, Armenians, and so on).[3] That means that over 90% of our
undergraduates belong to one of the identity groups covered by the diversity
requirement. Nothing in the proposed
requirement obliges those students to take courses relating to groups other
than their own, and if they do, as seems likely, end up enrolling disproportionately
in courses dealing with their own group, the result would be a form of
ghettoization.
The purported goal of the proposal is to
sensitize students to the point of view of others whose experiences differ from
their own, but in practice the requirement seems likely to have the opposite result. It might well simply encourage students to retreat
into their various identity group enclaves.
Thought reform
is not our mission
It is clear from the College Diversity
Committee’s report that a basic aim of the proposal is to reshape our
undergraduates’ “attitudes about race.”[4]
One goal, for example, is to break down “White students’ color blind racial
ideology.”[5] The aim, it seems to many opponents of the
proposal, is to get the University to adopt a kind of official ideology—a set
of beliefs and attitudes it would try to inculcate in its students.
A recent statement in the Daily Bruin, signed by nine student backers of the “diversity”
initiative, shows what lies in the hearts of some of the most fervent
supporters of the proposal. The mere
fact that a number of professors wanted the whole faculty to have a chance to
vote on the issue proves, to these supporters of “diversity,” that those
professors are “bigoted.” They want the
University authorities to hold those “renegade faculty” accountable. “There must be consequences,” they say, “for
actions that prevent diversity initiatives from being implemented”.[6] Voting NO would make it clear that we reject
that vision of what UCLA should be—that we do not accept the idea that the
University should be a place where a degree of ideological uniformity is
expected.
Many of our colleagues thus oppose this measure
because they believe the faculty should not sanction the politicization of the
University. They think that we, as an
institution, should not want to instill in our students a pre-packaged set of
beliefs reflecting a particular ideological perspective. They believe that our business is education,
not indoctrination. And they would take
the same view if the threat were coming from the right—as in fact was the case
during the McCarthy period—and not just from the left.
The case
for adopting the requirement is weak
For many opponents, the most important reason for
rejecting the proposal is that it would place an additional burden on
undergraduates in the College—students who, in many cases, already have their
hands full just completing the coursework required for their major. By forcing them to take a “diversity” course
in order to graduate, we would be limiting yet further their already limited
ability to take electives that interest them.
The burden is particularly great because (according to calculations some
of our colleagues have made) there probably would not be enough diversity
courses offered to enable students—and especially transfer students—to meet the
requirement and still graduate on time. Given
these problems (among others), the case for imposing this new requirement
should be compelling.
The proponents, in particular, would need to show
that whatever problems we have here at UCLA with racial, ethnic, or gender
insensitivity, the diversity requirement would be a good way of rectifying them. But the evidence the Diversity Committee
cited to prove that the requirement would have the desired effect is not
impressive. In some of the studies it
cites, for example, students are surveyed at the beginning and then at the end
of a “diversity” course (in one case before the grades were in); the “improved” answers they give at the end
is then taken as evidence that the course has worked.[7] But such conclusions
are suspect because of the tendency of those surveyed to give what sociologists
have called “socially appropriate answers.”
The favorable findings might simply show that students had learned to
give answers those administering the survey wanted to hear.[8]
A question
of fairness
This is the second time this proposal is being put
up for a vote this year. The October
poll of the College faculty produced a margin of 332 to 303 for the diversity
requirement. Some of our colleagues feel
that that first vote should have been dispositive. That point might have a certain force if the
process leading to that first vote had been fair. But it wasn’t. Arguments pro and con, for example, did not
accompany the ballot, as the Senate by-law governing this process required. Our colleagues, moreover, have been bombarded
with numerous emails from administration officials (including some department
chairs) urging a YES vote, while the opponents have not been given a chance to
lay out their own views in the same way.
On the eve of that October vote, the Daily
Bruin, which supports the proposal, simply refused to publish a statement
by one of our colleagues outlining his reasons for opposing it. And more recently proponents of this measure
have been trying to prevent the whole faculty from getting a chance to vote on
this issue. They have complained that “a
small group of opponents”—the 80 or so professors who have signed the
petitions—have undermined the “democratic process” that culminated in earlier
votes by the College faculty and the Senate’s Legislative Assembly by “forcing
a campus-wide faculty vote.” But
petitioning for a full vote—clearly provided for in the by-laws—can scarcely be
seen as a subversion of the “democratic process.” And it is certainly strange to see people who
view themselves as the heirs of the civil rights movement—a movement in which
voting rights loomed so large—trying so hard to prevent the whole faculty from
voting on this important question. What
are they afraid of?
Many opponents feel that the whole faculty should
have the right to vote because they believe a YES vote would have far-reaching
implications. If this measure is
approved, we would not just be imposing a new requirement on the undergraduates
in the College. We would also, in effect,
be giving our seal of approval to a certain vision of what the University
should be. To do so would be at odds
with the basic idea of a politically-neutral university committed to free and
open inquiry.
[1] Report of the UCLA College Diversity
Initiative Committee, June 9, 2014 (https://ccle.ucla.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=582356)., pp. 1, 2, 6. Emphasis added.
[2] Report of the Diversity Initiative
Implementation Committee, September 19, 2014 (https://ccle.ucla.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=538220), esp. pp. 4, 5, and appendix C. The Committee’s claim is that those courses that
do not explicitly deal with more than one group would still satisfy the
requirement because that group’s experience is considered in the context of a
“dominant culture.”
[3] For the figures, see UCLA Office of
Analysis and Information Management, “Enrollment Demographics, Fall 2014” (http://www.aim.ucla.edu/tables/enrollment_demographics_fall.aspx).
[4] Report of the UCLA College Diversity
Initiative Committee, June 9, 2014 (https://ccle.ucla.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=582356), p. 3.
[5] Ibid., pp. 3-4. To support the claim that a requirement of
this sort would have a desirable effect on racial attitudes, the committee in
that passage cited a study that argued that taking diversity courses decreases
“White students’ Color Blind Racial Ideology.”
To say that we can measure success in this area by whether we’re able to
get white students to abandon their “color blind racial ideology” clearly implies
that one goal of the proposal is to bring about change of this sort. If that were not a goal, a study of this sort
would never have been cited in this context.
[6] See Jazz Kiang et al.,
“Racism in UCLA bureaucracy hinders diversity requirement passage,” Daily Bruin, February 18, 2015 (http://dailybruin.com/2015/02/18/racism-in-ucla-bureaucracy-hinders-diversity-requirement-passage/). One of the authors of that statement, a
leading member of the College Diversity Initiative Student Advisory Committee,
had said earlier this year that those professors who had signed a statement
opposing the proposal “disrespect members of underrepresented communities on
campus”; they were “all white males,”
and he was angry that they could “say things that have a subtext that is
racist.” “Proposed diversity requirement
meets some faculty opposition,” Daily
Bruin, October 28, 2014 (http://dailybruin.com/2014/10/28/proposed-diversity-requirement-meets-some-faculty-opposition/). The ease with which advocates of the
“diversity” requirement feel free to accuse anyone who opposes them of “racism”
and “bigotry” is quite revealing, and it seems clear that this push for
“diversity” has had a chilling effect on free speech on campus. The goal of the requirement is supposedly to
“encourage communication and understanding across difference.” And in the
country as a whole we have heard a good deal in the past year about the
importance of having an honest conversation about these issues. But one gets the sense that from the point of
view of the diversity lobby, this would be a conversation in which only one
side does the talking—that the only voice it is really interested in hearing is
its own and that anyone who takes a different view is expected to remain
silent, upon pain of being accused of racism.
True intellectual diversity is
the last thing it seems to be interested in.
[7] College Diversity Initiative Report, p.
3. The study by You and Matteo cited in that passage was based on a survey
“administered in the first and the final week of the semester.” See the abstract for Di You and Elizabeth
Matteo, “Assessing the Effectiveness of Undergraduate Diversity Courses Using
the Multicultural Experiences Questionnaire,” Journal of College and Character 14, no. 1 (February 2013) (http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1010475).
[8] See Stanley Rothman, Seymour Martin
Lipset, and Neil Nevitte, “Racial Diversity Reconsidered,” The Public Interest, no. 151 (Spring 2003), pp. 29-30. This is a popularized version of Stanley
Rothman, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Neil Nevitte, “Does Enrollment Diversity
Improve University Education?” International
Journal of Public Opinion Research 15, no. 1 (Spring 3003) (http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/1/3.full.pdf+html). It is also important to note that the
conclusions scholarly studies have yielded are less clear-cut than the
Diversity Committee’s report would lead one to think. Mark Engberg, for example, noted ten years
ago that while many American colleges were trying to develop a diversity
requirement for their undergraduates, there was “a dearth of evidence on the
efficacy of these courses.” He could
find only seven studies that “examined the effects of a diversity course
requirement on students’ level of racial bias.” Of those, two “reported
positive effects,” three “showed mixed results,” and two “found insignificant
effects.” Mark Engberg,
“Improving Intergroup Relations in Higher Education: A Critical Examination of the Influence of
Educational Interventions on Racial Bias,” Review
of Educational Research 74, no. 4 (Winter 2004), pp. 482-83. And a very recent article by Nicholas Bowman and
Julie Park pointed out that while “some studies have shown that diversity
coursework is positively related to diversity interactions,” others had “not
found a significant relationship,” while yet another—an article written by
Bowman himself—reached the conclusion “that diversity coursework is associated
with having more negative diversity interactions” (i.e., interracial
“interactions that are hostile, tense, and/or hurtful in nature”). Nicholas
Bowman and Julie Park , “Interracial
Contact on College Campuses: Comparing and Contrasting Predictors of
Cross-Racial Interaction and Interracial Friendship,” Journal of Higher Education 85, no. 5
(September/October 2014), pp. 662, 665.
Bowman is a leading expert in this area. Indeed, one of his articles is
the very first source cited in the “Evidence” section of the College Diversity
Initiative Committee’s report.