- Mar 11, 2015
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There is only one reason ANYONE would believe that diversity or multicuturalism is a bad thing. Especially in the year 2024. So now we see that everything the right has claimed is wrong....Again.
Opinion by Christopher L. Eisgruber
The 20th President of Princeton University, where he is also the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values.
Anoxious and surprisingly commonplace myth has taken hold in recent years, alleging that elite universities have pursued diversity at the expense of scholarly excellence. Much the reverse is true: Efforts to grow and embrace diversity at America’s great research universities have made them better than ever. If you want excellence, you need to find, attract, and support talent from every sector of society, not just from privileged groups and social classes.
As the president of Princeton University, I see the benefits of that strategy on a daily basis—and never more vividly than when Princeton recognizes its most accomplished alumni. Later this month, for example, the university will honor Fei-Fei Li, a Chinese American immigrant who spent college weekends helping with her family’s dry-cleaning business, and now co-directs Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Li exemplifies the connection between excellence and diversity, as do other recent Princeton-alumni award recipients, including American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero, who grew up in a low-income housing project in the Bronx; Ariel Investments’ co–chief executive officer, Mellody Hobson, a Black woman brought up on Chicago’s South Side by a single mother who sometimes struggled to pay for rent or utilities; and General Mark Milley, a varsity hockey player from a blue-collar neighborhood in Winchester, Massachusetts.
www.theatlantic.com
Elite Universities Have Not Sacrificed Excellence for Diversity
Opinion by Christopher L. Eisgruber
The 20th President of Princeton University, where he is also the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values.
Anoxious and surprisingly commonplace myth has taken hold in recent years, alleging that elite universities have pursued diversity at the expense of scholarly excellence. Much the reverse is true: Efforts to grow and embrace diversity at America’s great research universities have made them better than ever. If you want excellence, you need to find, attract, and support talent from every sector of society, not just from privileged groups and social classes.
As the president of Princeton University, I see the benefits of that strategy on a daily basis—and never more vividly than when Princeton recognizes its most accomplished alumni. Later this month, for example, the university will honor Fei-Fei Li, a Chinese American immigrant who spent college weekends helping with her family’s dry-cleaning business, and now co-directs Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Li exemplifies the connection between excellence and diversity, as do other recent Princeton-alumni award recipients, including American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero, who grew up in a low-income housing project in the Bronx; Ariel Investments’ co–chief executive officer, Mellody Hobson, a Black woman brought up on Chicago’s South Side by a single mother who sometimes struggled to pay for rent or utilities; and General Mark Milley, a varsity hockey player from a blue-collar neighborhood in Winchester, Massachusetts.
Elite Universities Have Not Sacrificed Excellence for Diversity
Like most reactionary myths, hand-wringing about modern universities trades upon nostalgia from smart people who ought to know better.
www.theatlantic.com
~S~
