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The
Colorblind At the surface, it seems so simple: Diversity. Yes. We all want diversity at our public universities, a rainbow arcing into the academic sea. But wade a little deeper, and the waters get murky.
The UO's five-year Diversity Plan, meant to address and repair a history of racial inequality, is shattering any illusion of unity on campus. The plan focuses primarily on race but also makes brief mention of other dividers: gender, economic class, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, political beliefs, physical ability. It's a document heavy on concepts like cultural competency, equality and, well, diversity. The plan states its intent as a "call to action." It doesn't mandate many specific changes, but neither does it accept the status quo. It frames six goals centered on making the campus a more welcoming and inclusive climate with a "critical mass" of minority scholars and better cross-cultural understanding. Individual campus divisions are required to fill in that framework with details, subject to approval by four diversity provosts. Up rose a howl from the UO's most numbers-oriented departments. Fifty-odd faculty members — primarily from math, economics, chemistry, physics, computer science and business — signed a letter sharply critical of the plan. All but five of them are men; most are white; many are international. Why, they ask, should some groups of people get deferential treatment based on something as shallow as race? Wasn't it MLK who asked us to judge others "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character"? The first thing that history professor John Nicols wants you to know, if you're hearing him out on diversity, is that he's Latino. He was born to a Mexican mother and an English-Irish father, learned to speak in a bilingual household, attended a Catholic high school in L.A. and says he never experienced discrimination. Now 63 years old, he's the head of UO Humanities Program and has an office full of books in the UO's McKenzie Hall. Nicols finds the diversity plan uninspiring and doubts it'll change much on campus. He's primarily bothered by the budgetary aspect — why spend nearly half a million dollars a year to support new administrative positions dedicated to diversity? He'd rather the money be allocated to departments to recruit and retain talented faculty of color — like his colleague, Martin Summers, a popular African-American UO history professor who recently accepted a more lucrative offer at the University of Texas. Rather than trying to change minds at the university level, Nicols feels the UO should focus on better meeting the needs of Oregon's public school students before they get to college. To that end, he would prefer an economically-based diversity plan to attract low-income middle-schoolers to higher education through outreach projects. The result, he believes, will be a more ethnically diverse campus. Should the proportions of minority scholars on campus reflect state demographics? Nicols pulls up a chart showing the census data for Oregon: 83.5 percent white, 1.6 percent African-American, 1.3 percent Native-American, 3.2 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 5 percent non-white Hispanic. He compares that to the stats for the UO tenure-track faculty: 82 percent white, 1 percent African-American, 1 percent Native-American, 6.8 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 3.5 percent Hispanic. If the university should reflect the state demographics, Nicols argued, the UO has too many Asians and not enough whites. Women's and Gender Studies Assistant Professor Lynn Fujiwara rejects the notion that achieving campus demographics akin to the state's is sufficient. "Why would we be satisfied with demographics that are based on histories of racism?" she asks. "Students of color are saying they feel hostility, they feel unsafe, they have to endure insensitive comments from faculty sometimes, and there's no recourse. I think the demographic argument is short-sighted."
A history of racial discrimination cracks the foundations of the university, of Eugene, of Oregon. The fissures run through massacres and internments of Native Oregonians, through racist language that stayed in the state Constitution until 2000, through documented Ku Klux Klan activities that included prominent UO faculty, through more than 150 minority professionals who have left Eugene since 1990, through hundreds of race-related complaints and protests on campus. Should the university try to atone for Oregon's long and painful history of racial exclusion and discrimination? Nicols, the history professor, recalls his mother's dying words, burned into his mind when he was 6 years old: "The past is dead." "After so much grief, there isn't much that one can do," he says, fingers laced across his stomach, gazing out his office window. "There's no amount of material compensation that can make up for that kind of disaster." The fallout from history is hard to dismiss. Most four-year American colleges have about 25 percent minority students, compared to 13 percent at the UO. White students also graduate faster than students of color – 65 percent within six years, compared to 56 percent of African-American, 57 percent of Latino and 40 percent of Native-American students. The UO Bias Response Team fielded 92 complaints of discrimination during the 2004-05 fiscal year. In spring 2005, 36 minority College of Education students complained that they were repeatedly subjected to overt and subtle discrimination — hostility, threats, marginalization, retaliation and ignorance, as described in written testimonies. "That climate of segregation became the norm," said graduate student Shadiin Garcia. This spring, the administration again drew fire for the way it handled the search for a new law school dean. The hiring committee had narrowed the field to three candidates. After the first two candidates declined to accept the deanship, law school faculty expected UO President Dave Frohnmayer to offer the job to the remaining finalist, Kevin Johnson, a Latino legal scholar with an academic focus on immigration law and critical race theory. But Frohnmayer hesitated. According to internal emails from law school faculty, Frohnmayer said that Johnson didn't make solid eye contact. Not until some law school faculty protested did Frohnmayer offer the job to Johnson — but Johnson, already offended, declined. Some members of the law school faculty saw the incident as inherently racist, or at least a display of Frohnmayer's lack of cultural competency. In protest, law school professors Keith Aoki and Steven Bender accepted temporary positions at other universities. The recent departures of several other high-profile minority professors and administrators — such as Vice Provost Vincent and history professor Summers — underscored the sense that the university lacks a "critical mass" of faculty and students of color. The current Diversity Plan acknowledges that strife. It puts the UO on track with other American universities that have been crafting diversity strategies since the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled the University of Michigan law school was justified in giving ethnic minorities admissions preference. But these weren't the reasons that UO administrators, in 2002, decided to craft a diversity plan. It was a lawsuit settlement.
In 1995, Dr. Joseph Wade was the UO director of the Office of Academic Advising and Student Services. He'd been in that position for 10 years. He was in his late 50s and ready for a promotion, but unlike his white peers, he didn't get annual reviews, and didn't have proof of his value to the UO. The administration created three new student services-related positions a rung or two up the university hierarchy. Wade was highly qualified and would have applied for one or all of them. But all three positions were filled before anyone could apply. The new hires were all white. Wade is black, and at the time he was the only senior administrator who was a minority. He felt strongly that he was bypassed for the promotions, paid less than his white peers, and discriminated against in subtler ways because of his race. In 1996, he filed a lawsuit against his boss, Provost John Moseley, and the UO as a whole, alleging racial discrimination. Two years later Wade and the university settled out of court, and the UO agreed to design a plan to diversify its workforce. After the settlement, Moseley shunned Wade and gradually stripped him of his job duties, eventually firing him in 2001, according to a complaint that Wade's attorney filed with the U.S. District Court that year. Again Wade sued the university and Moseley for racial discrimination, this time tacking on an allegation of retaliation for the earlier lawsuit. In 2002, Wade and the UO again settled out of court. The university denied the allegations but reimbursed Wade's legal fees and adjusted his retirement salary by $98,500. The university also agreed to create a new administrative position, vice provost for institutional diversity, and develop and implement a diversity plan — steps that had been previously recommended by a diversity consultant. "We were happy to commit to Mr. Wade that we would do that," Moseley said. Wade was satisfied with the settlement. "I wasn't after a whole bunch of money. I was interested in bringing about change so that they would treat people fairly," he said. The court agreed to retain jurisdiction over the matter for up to six years.
The UO created the promised vice provost position and, in 2003, filled it with Greg Vincent, who had held similar titles at Louisiana State and the University of Wisconsin. Vincent got to work on the mandated Diversity Plan, presiding over a 79-person team that labored for nearly two years, finally releasing a draft in May 2005. The draft contained six prongs: developing cultural competency, building a critical mass, expanding and filling the educational "pipeline," strengthening community linkages, developing and reinforcing diversity infrastructure and improving campus climate. Most of the feedback was positive. But 25 faculty members signed a letter strongly opposing elements of the plan, particularly the cultural competency component, which they called "Orwellian" and "draconian." Cultural competency generally refers to the ability to recognize that every person is a product of a his or her social environment. At the university level, it means understanding students' diverse cultural backgrounds and developing teaching methods that will allow them to excel. The plan's critics were especially worried by suggestions for how to measure cultural competency — new criteria on job evaluations and a certification program for faculty. To the draft's supporters, cultural competency language was necessary and in keeping with national university trends. To its critics, it was thought control.
Days after the draft diversity plan was released, Vincent accepted an offer for a similar position at the University of Texas at Austin. He maintains that he left the UO for financial and family reasons — not because he felt discriminated against as one of the few African-American administrators. But he admits that he was "disappointed" by some faculty members' reaction to the diversity plan. The university replaced Vincent with Charles Martinez. In March 2006, Frohnmayer released the revised Diversity Plan. It replaces "cultural competency" with "cultural responsiveness" and gives campus divisions flexibility in writing individual plans. Math professors Alexander Kleshchev and Brad Shelton — vocal opponents of the plan since the release of the 2005 draft — penned a letter criticizing the plan's semantics. "The university actually does not consider equality as one of its core values, otherwise everybody would be paid the same salary and all students would be getting the same grades," the letter reads. The letter implies that increasing racial diversity on campus could hurt the quality of the university's research. Kleshchev agreed to an interview only on grounds that it be via email, that his responses either be quoted in entirety or he be given "veto power" on partial quotes. EW declined. Shelton did not respond to requests for comment. On May 14, the Diversity Advisory Committee released a revised plan. Three days later, a group of students and faculty members rallied outside of Johnson Hall, suggesting that the plan didn't go far enough. They made four demands: That the administration appoint a staff person and designate an office for the Bias Response Team; that ethnic studies and women's and gender studies be promoted from programs to departments and that queer studies and disability studies be offered as minors; that the administration create a staff position supporting scholars with disabilities; and that the administration create staff positions in the residence halls for student advocacy and diversity trainings. Student Maceo Persson, who was involved in the protest, feels that the plan's critics in the math and economics departments only demonstrate the extent of the university's diversity problems. "It's frustrating to have opposition to the diversity plan. It speaks to the reason why the UO needs to do this work," he said. Wade worries that the plan isn't specific enough to address the very issues that prompted him to file suit. "The emphasis on this whole diversity umbrella makes it really tough to prioritize and deal with the real live problem that they have," he says. "I think that what we have to do is try and operate in good faith," says Provost John Moseley. "We can't demand that every single faculty member and individual believe and act in a certain way. We're not into being thought police." Vice Provost Martinez was out of the country and unavailable for comment. According to the Diversity Plan schedule, departments will create individual diversity plans by May 2007. The plans will be in effect by May 2008, just in time for the court-imposed deadline.
Almost a third of the faculty members who signed the recent letter criticizing the plan are international scholars from Russia, Eastern Europe and China. Nicols, who teaches a class called "Comparative Dictatorships," isn't surprised. "People who have been through an oppressive education are very sensitive to these conversations," he says. One such critic is Victor Ostrik, a mathematician from Moscow who teaches at the UO as a visiting scholar. Ostrik was particularly uncomfortable with the cultural competency language in the 2005 draft, which reminded him of life under Stalin. "I am from the Soviet Union, where you had to say what you did each day for Communism," he said. "Cultural competency is not defined in this document. I am supposed to do something, but I am not sure what I am supposed to do. For me, teaching is universal. I don't see why I would teach African-Americans, or Russians, any differently than other students." Math assistant professor Dev Sinha also signed the critical letter, but his reasons are slightly different. Sinha explains that as an Affirmative Action institution, the UO is required to consider all candidates for any particular job and narrow the pool to the most qualified. All else being equal, the university must favor candidates from targeted minority groups. Sinha — half-Indian and half-white, born and raised in the American South — supports Affirmative Action and believes in the reality of racial discrimination. "I've been a victim of racism," he says. But the diversity plan goes too far for Sinha. "To say we're looking for cluster hires or critical mass … that starts to sound like [racial factors] are overriding academic merits," Sinha said. Wade isn't impressed with the controversial proceedings that have stemmed from his lawsuit. "In my view, the [opposition] is made up of a group of private entrepreneurs who teach economics or chemistry or physics, and those people really look out over their own best interests," he says.
Lynn Fujiwara is particularly offended that the plan's critics would cite MLK's words to support their point of view. "The color-blind perspective is based upon false assumptions and the idea that racial equity exists," she says. "It only protects the status quo, which is white domination, or lack of diversity — all those things that make the university an inhospitable place for people of color." The UO Senate planned to vote on the Diversity Plan on the evening of May 24, the day before publication of this issue but hours after our printing deadline. Look for an update next week. |
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