Former UC President Challenges
Higher Ed to "Rethink" Diversity Efforts

By Kate Callen I May 31, 2005

In a May 18 keynote address at a University of Michigan national conference on diversity, UC President Emeritus Richard C. Atkinson challenged higher education to build multiculturalism by broadening admission and outreach approaches, and he warned that, as California has learned, "compromise is impossible" in the debate over affirmative action "because each side claims the moral high ground."

From left to right: Don Brown, Paul Curant, Mary Sue Coleman, Richard Atkinson, and Wilbert McKeachie.

Declaring that "race still matters" in achieving equity, Atkinson outlined steps to pursue diversity in a more tactical fashion. He urged education leaders to "rethink what we mean by affirmative action" and to pay closer attention to demographic shifts, especially "a fracturing of American society along economic lines."

"We need a strategy that recognizes the continuing corrosive force of racial inequality but does not stop there," he said. "We need a strategy grounded in the broad American tradition of opportunity because opportunity is a value that Americans understand and support."

Atkinson's speech, titled "Opportunity in a Demographic Society: A National Agenda," was the third annual Nancy Cantor Distinguished Lectureship on Intellectual Diversity. It was the centerpiece of "Futuring Diversity: Creating a National Agenda," a conference organized by the University of Michigan to elicit guidance for its nascent Center for Institutional Diversity.

As Atkinson noted, Michigan is caught in the same vortex that California faced when he became UC President in 1995. Modeled after Proposition 209, a new anti-affirmative ballot measure slated for November 2006 could, said Atkinson, "make Michigan the latest testing ground for this contentious issue." Given similar initiatives in other states, "some are predicting that America is about to enter its post-affirmative action age."

The "values debate" over race-neutral admissions has polarized the nation because "both sides argue from principles that are time-honored in American life," he noted. Proponents of racial preferences argue that diverse campuses provide better education. Opponents, quoting directly from the Civil Rights Act of 1964, contend that individual rights can only be upheld through color-blind admissions.

Citing a notable study of public attitudes on affirmative action conducted by Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University Law School, Atkinson said that whites, African Americans, Latinos and Asians have radically different views about mechanisms to achieve diversity. "Quotas, "preferences" and similar terms "have become so burdened with emotional baggage that they confuse rather than clarify the discussion," he said. "As a nation, we simply do not speak the same language when we talk about discrimination."

Looking back at the UC experience with Proposition 209's "contradictory mandate" to attract a multicultural student body while ignoring race and ethnicity, Atkinson recounted steps taken under his governance to diversify the university. These included:

. outreach focused on low-performing schools
. admissions test requirements emphasizing achievement over aptitude
. "comprehensive review" criteria that credit applicants for overcoming obstacles
. the Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) second path to admission for students in the top four percent of every California high school
. expanded transfer programs guaranteeing admission to qualified community college graduates

The ELC program was especially effective, Atkinson noted, because letters sent to every eligible student acquainted many families with the value of a UC education and thereby raised their sights. "A few students were already eligible for UC but simply did not realize that fact until they learned of their inclusion in ELC," Atkinson said. "And a number of low-performing schools that did not offer all of the [required] courses were under considerable pressure from students and parents to do so."

While these efforts have helped reverse the UC's post-209 decline in diversity, "we have failed badly to achieve the goal of a student body that encompasses California's diverse population," he said. The most alarming trend is a drop in enrollment among African Americans, "many of whom are trapped in a seemingly permanent cycle of poverty and discrimination."

Atkinson suggested that poverty may now constitute a new front of discrimination that requires a more concerted focus. In a study of 19 elite U.S. colleges and universities, researchers William Bowen, Martin Kurzweil, and Eugene Tobin found that low-income high schoolers who could become first-generation college students made up 19 percent of the college-age population. But they only represented 3 percent of enrollment at the elite schools surveyed.

"UC's experience with outreach, the four-percent plan, and comprehensive review has shown that students in these situations have often shown extraordinary academic initiative and persistence," Atkinson said. "If our assumptions about merit are too narrow to include them, our assumptions need another look."

In closing, Atkinson suggested four thrusts for Michigan's Center for Institutional Diversity:

. "Think through what 'affirmative action' and the pursuit of diversity ought to mean in the 21st century . [in light of] tectonic shifts in the social, racial, and economic landscape of American life."
. "Re-establish public awareness of the large societal purposes universities are committed to fulfill. None is more important than providing wide educational opportunity and upward mobility.
. "Look closely and honestly at the academic criteria that universities have traditionally assumed are valid indicators of academic achievement." These include "the long indenture of American education to so-called aptitude tests like the old SAT . [and] the reflexive preference [for] students who have amassed a large number of credits from honors and Advanced Placement courses."
. "A center on diversity that focused only on higher education would fail in its purpose. . We need to recognize the importance of K-12 and early childhood education [in] programs like Head Start."

For a transcript of the entire lecture, visit: http://www.diversity.umich.edu/futuring/cantor.html