Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Charles Martinez, in the ODE:

[O]ur graduates will go out into a world that is much more diverse than Oregon, and we have a responsibility to educate them in an environment that will enhance their ability to compete in the ‘global marketplace.’

Maybe I’m being over-sensitive, but I think if I were an Oregonian – diverse or non-diverse – the phrasing of this would come a bit close to “you’re a bunch of hicks” for my liking. (Also, and I feel churlish even pointing this out, there is nowhere even the slightest indication of how the efforts of the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity will enhance the ability of the benighted non-diverse masses to compete in the ‘global marketplace.’ As near as I can figure, it’s some sort of osmotic process involving physical proximity to the diverse.)

For a refreshing change of tone, everyone who hasn’t done so already should check out Bill Harbaugh’s diversity blog, as linked by Michael below. Problems are stated. Policies are suggested. And – this is the good bit – the applicability of the latter to the former is addressed:

We would like to see some specific goals, some plans for achieving them, some evidence these plans will work, and some estimates of the cost. The current diversity plan does not even include a reference, footnote or bibliography. I can’t find even one mention of how the proposed ideas have worked at other universities. There is no discussion of costs, no estimate of how many people will be helped, or of the tradeoffs. The plan we are preparing will do our best to document these things.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 7th, 2006 at 18:03 by olly and is filed under Campus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.