The Maturing of Diversity Initiatives on American Campuses

Abstract

America's corporations have embraced the value of diversity, and higher education is following suit as it recognizes its unique responsibility to educate students for a diverse world. Over the past three decades, the academy has been engaged in a democratic experiment to create more inclusive campuses grounded in scholarship about the previously excluded majority of humankind. Our understanding of diversity has matured as we realize diversity is not just about adding to what is but about transforming the relations between the parts, and in the process reconceiving the whole. Some of the emerging curricular models, goals for student learning, and characteristics of the ideal dynamic in a diversity classroom are presented in this article.