HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Excerpts from 'Diversity and Learning'

Present and Past

In light of current controversy, Rudenstine urges attention to a long-recognized idea--a diverse community of students strongly benefits the process of learning:

"During the past two years, we have seen a steady growth in controversy concerning issues of student diversity, university admissions, and affirmative action. Amid this national discussion and debate, specific proposals have been advanced in some quarters to eliminate factors such as race, ethnicity, and gender from consideration in university admissions . . . ."

"As we look ahead, I believe we need to examine not only current ideas and recommendations, but also the relevant past. We need to remind ourselves that student diversity has, for more than a century, been valued for its capacity to contribute powerfully to the process of learning and to the creation of an effective educational environment. It has also been seen as vital to the education of citizens -- and the development of leaders -- in heterogeneous democratic societies such as our own."

More than a century ago, Rudenstine writes, philosophers and educators began to emphasize the importance of diversity to the process of learning:

"Many nineteenth century educators tended to think of diversity in terms of ideas -- differences in opinions and views . . . An important variation of the theme emerged in the work of major thinkers during the 1840s and 1850s. John Stuart Mill stressed the value of bringing 'human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves . . .' [and John] Newman envisioned colleges with a multitude of students -- 'the world on a small field.'. . . For both Mill and Newman, these forms of diversity are not mere extras; they are integral to true learning at a profound level. They are not dispensable. They shape some of the fundamental ways in which knowledge itself is generated, tested, and transformed into understanding."

Rudenstine writes that, when the nation stood on the brink of the Civil War, Harvard President C.C. Felton and others "saw a need for colleges and universities to provide an education based on experience with different types of people. . . . One way to help achieve this hope, in Felton's view, was for Harvard to become a truly national institution. [Gathering together] 'students from every State and Territory in the Union'. . . could make a difference to the creation of unity throughout the country as a whole."

Turn-of-the-century social conditions made diversity a volatile subject, Rudenstine writes, and efforts to diversify the university were controversial:

"Struggles between differing religions, and between religion and science (particularly the ideas of Darwin), intensified. The movement for women's rights created greater tensions, even as it gathered strength. The social position of black Americans, following the Civil War and Reconstruction, was anything but resolved. Perhaps most significantly, successive waves of 'new immigrants' had been arriving since the mid-1800s. . . . This continuous influx of people gave rise to considerable anxieties and fears. . . . In the 1890s, a decision to enroll even a modest number of university students from some of these [immigrant] groups was not uncontroversial."

The persistent debate over diversity is also evident in the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in the 1978 Bakke case, in which Justice Powell's pivotal opinion disapproved of an admissions program using minority set-asides, but supported the consideration of race or ethnicity as a "plus" factor in admissions:

"The rationale that Justice Powell found persuasive was based directly on educational grounds: the presence of minority students contributed -- along with the presence and contributions of other students -- to diversity, and therefore to the total educational environment of an institution, as well as to the education of all its members."

Despite controversy, Rudenstine writes, we should not undervalue the difficult but steady progress that has been made in achieving a more diverse society:

"The extent of our nation's success in dealing with diversity can be measured only in the full light of our entire history. Without such a long-term view, as well as an informed awareness of what can be achieved in a heterogeneous society (and at what speed), we will almost certainly undervalue all that has been accomplished so far, and we will be tempted to overdramatize the shock effect of periodic incidents: incidents that can easily be interpreted as evidence of crisis or failure, when in fact they are often no more than signs of the inescapable if unsettling stresses which exist in a large and complex democratic society such as ours."

While progress on some fronts has been encouraging, the gains to date do not warrant a relaxation of effort:

"There have clearly been increased opportunities for members of historically underrepresented groups in colleges and universities during the past quarter century. Positive steps of this kind, however, are very recent, and are far from secure. Twenty-five to thirty years of improved access to higher education is a very brief time span. It is scarcely one generation -- barely long enough for graduates of the late 1960s to have had children who are now reaching college age."

"Far from having reached a point where we can feel confident about the gains that have been made since the 1960s, we are still very much in the process of creating the conditions necessary for continuous long-range sustainability. The achievements to date are real, but they are also too recent, too fragile, and too incomplete for relaxation of effort."

Grades and test scores, in themselves, do not tell the whole story about candidates for admission, Rudenstine writes:

"There is a broad consensus that standardized test scores can be valuable as one factor, among several, in helping to assess candidates for admission. Their greatest use is in providing some evidence about likely academic performance . . . [but] they do not, for example, measure a student's ability to exercise good judgment in different situations, or to understand other human beings; nor do they assess qualities such as competitiveness, decisiveness, and cooperativeness -- or creativity and imagination . . . [Furthermore,] test scores of individuals fluctuate over time, and some of these changes are due to the quality of a student's educational opportunities and preparation."

Rudenstine adds:

"When such a large proportion of applicants are barely distinguishable on statistical grounds, SAT scores and GPAs are clearly of only limited value. Admissions processes, therefore, must remain essentially human. They must depend on informed judgment rather than numerical indices."

The admissions process at Harvard, Rudenstine says, aims to evaluate each individual on the basis of a broad range of factors:

"As the admissions staff evaluates candidates, it looks carefully at letters of recommendation from teachers and others; at the actual quality of a student's academic work (not simply the grades); at evidence of character and commitment; at each student's written personal statement; and at assessments of the nature and quality of a student's contributions in specific extracurricular activities or employment situations. These and other factors -- including those characteristics that can enable individual students to contribute something distinctive to the diversity of the student body -- create the framework for admissions to Harvard College, and they provide a much sounder basis for informed decisions than reliance on any one or two indicators could conceivably supply."

Through an admissions process that weighs, along with many other factors, the capacity of an individual to contribute something distinctive to the student body, the university seeks to create a more stimulating environment for education:

"The primary purpose of diversity in university admissions . . . is not the achievement of abstract goals, or an attempt to compensate for patterns of past societal discrimination. It represents now as it has since the mid-nineteenth century, positive educational values that are fundamental to the basic mission of colleges and universities . . . "

"The way to proceed in the future is not to introduce absolute prohibitions on the consideration of race (or other factors) in admissions, but to treat such characteristics with the same care and scrupulousness that we have historically given to so many aspects of diversity . . . "

"In selecting those students who will be offered places, the whole must be seen to be genuinely greater than the sum of the parts . . . The question is how to admit not only individuals, but also an entire entering class of students who -- in their collective variety -- are likely to have a strong capacity to teach and learn from one another . . . "