To:

The Wellesley College Community

From:

Diana Chapman Walsh, President

Subject:

Multiculturalism and Educational Excellence

Date:

May 2001

During the past several months many of us on campus have been engaged in provocative and productive conversations about the nature of multicultural community here at Wellesley College. These conversations with our students, faculty and staff have at times been contentious, but they have been sparked by the very best of reasons - a mutual desire to make Wellesley better than it is currently as well as a desire to hold ourselves accountable for the tangible outcomes of our multicultural rhetoric. These difficult conversations are necessary because they prompt us periodically to re-evaluate our assumptions, and thereby expand our worldviews. We educate both ourselves and each other by respectfully challenging existing hypotheses as we can expect to be challenged in kind. Our continuing debate is evidence that our institution is intellectually healthy, and that our alumnae, faculty, and staff care about Wellesley's mission and direction.

Three years ago I prepared a paper on the pivotal link between multiculturalism and educational excellence and sent it to the entire campus community. In light of current conversations, it seems timely to revisit some of those earlier ideas so that we can engage and debate those areas where we may disagree and forge a common vision for an evolving, more inclusive Wellesley. With that goal in mind, I am offering this condensed version of the earlier document as an invitation into dialogue about our joint and several understandings of the all-important relationships between our mission of educational excellence and our continuing commitment to multiculturalism.

As a college dedicated to preparing students of all backgrounds to function as powerful women in an increasingly global society, Wellesley's commitment to multiculturalism is solid and secure. Through the concerted efforts of many people at Wellesley for many years, the College has made substantial progress meeting the challenges of demographic and cultural changes in the United States. We have experienced significant transformations in America's collective consciousness of our ethnic, racial and economic diversity, our historic blunders and tragedies, their ongoing legacies of inequality, and, most urgently, what needs to be done to produce "liberty and justice for all." This is a daunting challenge, as was pointed out by Wellesley College's Ad Hoc Working Group on Race and Diversity in its 1997 report. "The problems of constructing viable multiracial and multiethnic communities," the report stated, "are among the outstanding intellectual, political, and ethical challenges of the postmodern period that engages the time and attention of the College's finest teachers and scholars."

Wellesley College, and especially our student body, is more heterogeneous than most institutions of our kind, and of that we are justifiably proud. But we cannot take for granted the ground we have gained. And we know, as well, that much additional work remains to be done if we are to become a truly pluralistic community dedicated to the highest standards of teaching and scholarship to prepare women of all races, classes, national origins, and cultures to make a difference in the world.

Our recent history has included occasionally heightened conflict about diversity, racism, and multiculturalism. These dramatic events take place against a backdrop of largely unheralded, yet resolute efforts to sustain an inclusive community unambiguously devoted to educational excellence. I won't take space here to review those efforts, but I do want to emphasize at the outset that the commitment and energy to productively address issues of racism and diversity provide a strong foundation on which to build.

As we build, our plans will require the following elements:

· a collectively-defined, shared vision toward which we can aspire, even as we recognize areas in which we still have uncertain and ground-breaking work to do;

· a statement of principles, a common vocabulary, and clear definitions of key concepts that will align our strategies and policies with our longer-range vision;

· a set of specific strategies and policy initiatives that will advance us toward our vision, together with clarity as to who is accountable for what actions, across what span of time;

· an awareness of the knowledge, skills and resources we have and those we need -- especially faculty and curricular resources -- to meet the goal of sustaining our academic excellence.

1. A Vision of an Inclusive Multicultural Community at Wellesley College

First, we need a shared vision and that may be the hardest step, owing to the multiplicity of voices we bring to this college. One of the most challenging tasks of a president is to listen to all those voices, harmonize them as best she can (with one another and with voices of the past and future) and speak on behalf of the institution as a whole.

The kind of inclusive multicultural community I believe we aspire to be is one in which everyone can feel a legitimate sense of ownership and all can be secure in the knowledge that they will be respected for who they are, judged, in Dr. King's unforgettable words, not by the color of their skin or outward appearance but by "the content of their character." All constituencies and subgroups in this community will belong to it, feel welcome here, and share equally the responsibility for ensuring that we are doing our best to produce educational excellence.

We will remain committed to diversifying our ranks at every level of the organization and to examining as honestly as we can where our rhetoric about pluralism and inclusiveness may deviate from our reality, where our practices may be defeating our principles and how we can close the gaps. And we will make every effort to take advantage of the many opportunities available in our college to explore our differences and discover our commonalities so that all of us may emerge with stronger, more complex understandings of ourselves and our societies.

2. Diversity & Multiculturalism: Toward Common Principles and Concepts

Our educational excellence depends on our commitment to pursue knowledge and scholarship with unrelenting integrity and without fear. Wellesley College is founded on the conviction that liberally-educated women can make a better world, one built on intellectual analysis and understanding, combined with respect, compassion, and trust.

An excellent liberal arts education fosters flexible intellectual skills; critical habits of mind; respect for history and appreciation of beauty; tolerance, civility and empathy; and a spirit of responsible stewardship for future generations. Students who come to Wellesley should find themselves in a community in which knowledge is acquired as part of the life-long process of intellectual inquiry, moral engagement, and social responsibility.

In the 21st century, American colleges and universities must determine how to conserve their commitments to learning and scholarship and how to sustain collaboration and participation in a commonly shared culture as market capitalism, increasing inequality, and a degrading global environment foster increasingly polarized debates about diversity, multiculturalism and affirmative action.

Some of the emotional charge in debates about diversity and multiculturalism stems from the only barely masked political economy underlying the conflict. Some additional emotional charge derives from conceptual complexity and linguistic inadequacies. This is a field in which even well-intentioned people often find themselves speaking at cross purposes and not being heard. Ambiguity sidesteps conflict but it can also mask deeper agreement; confusion interferes with effective dialogue. Greater clarity and more consistent use of terms, although no panacea, may help dissipate some of the political heat. In any case, clear policy making and leadership require a common language and an intellectual framework within which to work. First, the terms "diversity" and "multiculturalism" can be clarified.

Viewpoint Diversity in the Academy

Diversity is integral to our educational mission. Justice Powell, in the Bakke case, connected the diversity of opinions and ideas ("viewpoint diversity") -- a self-evident precondition for educational vitality -- to the state's (and educators') substantial interest in racial and ethnic diversity. Because group identities serve as imprecise but nonetheless telling influences on an individual's viewpoint, racial and ethnic variety contributes to the "total educational environment of an institution, as well as to the education of all its members." Diversity is therefore enhanced by but not limited to the racial and ethnic categories used in mandatory federal survey reports.

Viewpoint diversity is, however, a broader category than racial and ethnic heterogeneity. Viewpoint diversity, in this broader sense, encompasses ideas, methodologies, disciplines, analytic frameworks, and ways of seeing and knowing; it is long ago as well as far away; it includes the distinctive ways of asking questions and seeking answers in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences; it involves the whole range of aptitudes and interests (both intellectual and extra-curricular) we assess when we admit students and when we recruit colleagues.

The independent and mutual contribution of viewpoint diversity and racial and ethnic diversity to the education of all students justifies our support for diversity. The broader focus on viewpoint diversity does not diminish the significance of race and racism, past and current discrimination, the historic under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities, or the benefits that inclusion brings to individuals from a whole variety of under-represented groups. It does shift the argument to the educational benefits available to all members of the College community through effective policies of inclusiveness. Emphasis on the benefits of inclusiveness to the educational mission of the College and all its members can help diminish our tendency to sort ourselves into increasingly problematic essentialist camps.

This shift in emphasis -- from a historically-based case for diversity justified as remedy for past exclusion to one that looks forward to a challenging educational environment for everyone -- suggests a second shift in the more general argument about diversity in the academy. Policies of inclusiveness provide great benefit to the society at large: increasing the total pool of educated workers and citizens, enhancing individual and collective capacities to operate within a global environment, facilitating more effective interaction among colleagues and neighbors from diverse experiences and perspectives.

A commitment to multiculturalism implies a commitment as well to global education, defined in the final report of the Global Education Advisory Committee as "the ensemble of the intellectual, curricular, co- and extra-curricular, technological, and administrative activities that are necessary if we wish to make sure that Wellesley College can give our students an education that will in fact prepare them 'to make a difference in the world.'"

The Term "Multiculturalism"

But, for now, how do we understand the concept "multiculturalism," and its relationship to diversity? First, the term is probably not the one we would select today to describe what we are seeking to accomplish. A debate on multiculturalism, published in The Black Scholar, identified divergent uses to which the term has been put, and highlighted objections to it:

o it is used as a code word to replace an obsolete notion of the "melting pot" that seemed to assume full assimilation to a central norm;

o it obscures the centrality of race;

o it assumes a commonality of interest or understandings among people designated as "multiculturals;"

o its use is so "flexibly inclusive that it might best be understood as attitudinal rather than denotative;"

o it is "part euphemism, part shibboleth, and entirely mystification ... yield(ing) itself equally to its ... detractors and its ... celebrants;"

o it "enable(s) an endless assortment of 'identity' factions to claim for themselves the moral authority achieved by the hard-fought struggles [of] the civil rights and black power movements;"

o it allows proponents to use the rubric of multiculturalism to "represent themselves as egalitarians rather than partisans" while nonetheless privileging their own group;

o it is so broad an umbrella "that no ethnic group or lifestyle faction can be excluded from it, including those which constitute the so-called 'dominant' group" (e.g. those with European heritage, particularly if they can assume a recognizable "ethnic" identity such as Italian-American, Irish-American, etc.).

It's tempting to jettison a term so mired in polemics and confusion, but there are good reasons to preserve the concept at Wellesley College, while clarifying its use. First, our local debates are conditioned (both constrained and enabled) by their context and prior taxonomies, as well as by the broader national debate. On the one hand (as we learned during discussions of the multicultural requirement) we can't seem to escape the term, even when we try; on the other, we do want to affirm and claim the positive legacy of specific programs and statements of purpose that have fruitfully employed the term and moved us forward.

Second, and more affirmatively, when modified and augmented, the term multiculturalism can help crystallize useful understandings:

(1) By locating the study of race and racism within the rubric of multiculturalism, we underscore fluid cultural processes of social construction, thus challenging the deterministic concepts of race that are so destructive and divisive.

(2) While preserving the historical specificity of racism (and of the black experience in America), multiculturalism draws needed attention to the discrimination and prejudice experienced as a consequence of cultural difference. Aspects of a group's culture -- language, religion, family structures and mores, style of dress -- can set members at odds with the dominant culture, occasioning discrimination, conflict, and isolation, a process the rubric of multiculturalism brings into focus. And, multiculturalism invites attention to distinctive cultures, encouraging public recognition of special contributions, aspirations and achievements of each group.

(3) More than any alternative framework, multiculturalism draws attention to the increasingly widespread process of cultural hybridity. Children of an era of globalization, current Wellesley College students often bring complex multiple identities, defined by partial and overlapping categories of nationality, religion, race, ethnicity and/or sexual identity. Many at Wellesley College (and not only students but also faculty and staff), are products of a confluence of diverse cultural influences.

In the end, diversity and multiculturalism overlap extensively and are mutually reinforcing. Diversity is a broader rubric that encompasses cultural diversity or multiculturalism. The diversity associated with race and ethnicity is one component of multiculturalism but, as is often overlooked, the earlier tradition of diversity (viewpoint diversity) also makes a valuable contribution to multiculturalism. Appeal to diversity in opinions and ideas (a Wellesley College value that can readily be summoned) may be the strongest bulwark against divisive and paralyzing debates. Moreover, it attaches the concept of diversity (and by extension multiculturalism) to humanistic values of free speech, academic freedom and rational discourse.
There are two other, practical, advantages to the term multiculturalism:

o Culture consists of "the values the members of a given group hold, the norms they follow, and the material goods they create," and the rubric of multiculturalism subsumes the broad range of identity groups represented in Wellesley College's Multicultural Council (at last count, over 50 national, ethnic and cultural organizations).

o Multiculturalism emphasizes increased understanding of diverse cultures and draws particular attention to opportunities for enhancing cross-cultural and inter-group interactions, studies, and competencies.

Conceptual clarification will never inoculate us against expressions of confusion or resentment, but it should make it somewhat easier to respond forcefully and to pursue common objectives. In addition, the exercise in conceptual mapping helps frame more specific policy.

3. Strategies and Policy Implications

Implementation strategies and policy initiatives follow from these definitions and distinctions. In designing and implementing policy, we should emphasize the contribution of diversity -- viewpoint diversity, ethnic and racial diversity, cultural diversity -- to the education of our students (for their development as citizens and women who will make a difference in the world) and to the overall intellectual vitality and excellence of the College.

To advance multiculturalism at Wellesley College we will need to:

(1) ensure that diversity and multiculturalism remain integral to the mission and strategic plans of the College, division by division, as developed in annual goal-setting processes, monitored on a regular basis, and described in reports to the community from the Office of Equal Opportunity and Multicultural Policy;

(2) clarify and communicate more effectively the various staff, faculty, student and committee roles, tasks, and accountabilities related to multiculturalism and diversity: in curricular development, equal employment opportunity, human resources policy, conflict resolution, in training initiatives, student recruitment, admission, and retention, and in student life;

(3) monitor on a regular basis, and, as necessary, improve the policies and procedures, action plans, and measurement tools aimed at ensuring continued progress toward diversifying our perspectives, with specific attention to faculty hiring, mentoring, and retention; student recruitment, retention, and outcomes; and the composition of administrative, technical, support, service, and maintenance staff at all levels and in all divisions;

(4) organize educational opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to share their knowledge, and learn from outside experts, on diversity, cross-cultural communication, conflict resolution and related topics;

(5) integrate more fully into mainstream policy formation and strategic planning the existing College committees (particularly the standing committees of Academic Council: the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination and the Minority Recruitment, Hiring, and Retention Committee) as well as other College organizations focused on multiculturalism and diversity;

(6) revisit the diversity of the curriculum through the committees of Academic Council and involve faculty and students in the clarification of our thinking on the adequacy of the curriculum: where we are now, how much we have changed over the past 20 years, what deliberate changes we envisage over the next five-to-10 years and why;

(7) develop responses to requests for space on campus from cultural organizations -- responses that foster better communication, more shared experiences, more meaningful exchanges, deepening relationships, more powerful learning experiences, and more fun for all.

Recruitment, Hiring, Retention and Advancement

Although each segment of the College's work force presents specific challenges, it seems right to start with consistent premises that apply across the board to the faculty, administrative staff, and unionized work force:

o innovative programs and policies may be needed to jump-start a process of diversifying a segment of the work force, especially where under-representation of women or specific minority groups persists or a glass ceiling seems to limit their job mobility;

o an institutional commitment to diversity emphasizes sustained outreach and recruitment efforts backed by senior managers, who must be directly and visibly involved in monitoring success.

Wellesley College's recent history suggests that special initiatives do work: among faculty hires in the initial five-year period in which target of opportunity programs and one-in-three guidelines were in effect (starting in 1989) 39% of new tenure-track hires were minorities. As of last academic year 31% of the tenure-track faculty and 19% of the tenured faculty is minority as defined by the federal EEO classification system.

We adopted revised "guidelines for recruitment and outreach in tenure-track appointments" and a "faculty search plan" (which drew on search plans for staff hiring developed by the Office of Human Resources). This is now being used as a model for hiring in all segments of the College work force. In particular, recent modifications -- to include meetings between department chairs and the Dean or Associate Dean of the College responsible for a given search before short lists of candidates are finalized -- provide a clear mechanism for direct senior staff involvement and leadership.

In the annual review of departments' applications for tenure-track positions, the Office of the Dean of the College has been particularly interested in requests for appointments that would enhance teaching and learning of multicultural material, broadly defined. This interest pertains to the new faculty member's areas of scholarly or teaching expertise, not to his or her racial or ethnic identity. In addition, we have fortified the Minority Scholar-in-Residence program and, aided significantly by MRHR, are beginning to more closely monitor the mentoring of minority faculty.

An intellectually vibrant and diverse faculty, with attendant viewpoint diversity, is clearly important to our educational mission. Less obvious, but also considerable, is the viewpoint diversity represented by a multicultural staff, broadly defined. Because of its importance we will redouble our efforts to attract, recruit and retain a diverse staff at all levels of administration.

Multiculturalism in the Curriculum

Effective faculty hiring and retention will go a long way toward enhancing multiculturalism in the curriculum. An analysis conducted by the 1998 Global Education Advisory Committee indicated that of 121 tenure-track faculty hired between 1987 and 1997, 42 (35%) were "global and multicultural hires."

In addition, programs providing support for new or modified multicultural courses and the Student Multicultural Research Grant are positive incentives for interested faculty and students to advance multiculturalism. Support for these programs will continue, with stewardship from the Office of the Dean of the College. The Committee on Educational Research and Development provides grants to faculty to encourage innovative course development in targeted areas, including courses with a multicultural focus.
The Office of the Dean of the College compiled a 2001 inventory indicating that over the previous four years 254 different courses had been used to satisfy the Multicultural Requirement. As another indicator of the direction in which the curriculum has grown, a 1997 study of holdings in the Clapp Library revealed that over the previous eight years acquisitions of new titles related to ethnic and cultural studies had nearly doubled, one-third of new titles acquired each year are published outside the United States, and approximately 14% of annual acquisitions are in languages other than English. Similarly, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center has been diversifying its holdings.

Nonetheless, we are heeding concerns students have been raising about curricular diversity. Many universities and colleges have been struggling with these issues and most responses are dependent on local cultures. Often solutions will require inter-institutional collaboration. At Wellesley we need time to implement and observe the combined effects on the curriculum of our hiring guidelines, new distribution and multicultural requirements, and possibilities opened by our new initiatives in interdisciplinary studies and through the development of half-unit courses, as well as possibilities that may emerge from new partnerships with area institutions.

Meanwhile, in response to students' concerns that the curriculum is deficient, we need to clarify (1) the mix of knowledge, skills, and sensibilities we believe they actually need for effective citizenship in today's changing world and why, and (2) whether and how we believe the current curriculum is in fact meeting those needs.

First, we know our students need the fundamentals of the liberal arts: education for citizenship in a complex and changing global society, knowledge of the past and anchoring in the present, analytic and critical reasoning that demands ability to assess and evaluate contradictory claims and aspirations, public speaking, rhetoric, and mastery of a body of knowledge that is both broad and in some field quite deep. In addition we ought to provide our students:

o the knowledge and ability to collaborate and communicate with fluency across a range of cultures, races, religions, and socioeconomic groups;

o an understanding of American history and emergent identity in a global context, the contributions of diverse groups and perspectives to the nation's identity and consciousness, literature and political traditions;

o an appreciation of the variety and scope of global experience and the ways in which different cultures interrelate and influence one another;

o an understanding of the ways in which structural elements of social life (e.g., discrimination) operate and interact with individual agency, will, and choice;

o a sophisticated grounding in the frameworks and diverse roots of modern science and Western thought and of the great historical transitions such as the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution;

o an informed view of the stake we all have, having witnessed the close of the bloodiest century in world history, in finding some common ground, some tools with which to coexist on this fragile planet;

o an appreciation of and ability to deal with conflict as a creative intellectual force.

4. Resources We Lack and Need: Learning from Conflict

Paradoxically, it seems to me, we will need to hold, honor, and amplify our differences in order to forge bonds of community. We can do a better job of describing and modeling for our students how intellectuals and scholars produce knowledge and how they debate with one another about profound and sensitive issues in a responsible and meaningful way. We should teach and learn how to deal with difference and disagreement by relating analytical reasoning and understanding to moral and political values.

Wellesley College will never be a utopia free of ignorance, incivility, and disagreement. If we pretend the College is or ever can exist without moments of discomfort, enmity, or conflict, we do ourselves and our community a disservice. Such a pretense, inevitably, mutes and blurs the differences that make for a rich and vibrant intellectual environment. If we're serious about taking advantage of the creative power of our diversity, then we must understand conflict as a necessary, productive force.

Differences of opinion and experience -- polar positions and contradictions -- are a critical part of life and learning. Education involves first mastering new categories and then integrating the new into a larger, more organic whole. The differentiation stage -- apprehending what is different from what is already known -- requires heightening and sharpening differences, intellectually and experientially, widening the gap between two opposing poles, really seeing, feeling and understanding what is different. The integration stage involves finding a new position that can incorporate the two conflicting realities in a third, more complex and more comprehensive whole, an essential element of many creative processes.

But while one learns from differences that are heightened and amplified, not muted and papered over, we should try to avoid, as best we can, personal attacks and personalized responses, turning differences of viewpoint, fact or interpretation into personal wounds. When that happens, as it often seems to do at Wellesley, it threatens a relationship and shifts the focus quickly from the intellectual work of understanding and learning about a substantive difference to the emotional work of mending or compensating for damaged identity or relationship. We need to learn to engage in conflict, serious and sometimes painful, sometimes even irreconcilable, as an ordinary and inevitable part of social life. Only when conflict is understood in its inevitability and its productivity, will we begin to develop capacities and skills to manage it well.

Conclusion

In closing, if we place multiculturalism where I believe it belongs -- in the context of fundamental educational values associated with a free exchange of multiple views -- we will continue to progress. Such progress, in turn, will necessitate resolute leadership in the design and implementation of well-crafted policies that integrate multiculturalism with the core values and functions of the College, and creative work articulating and monitoring concrete goals that will sustain us as an inclusive, diverse, and intellectually challenging college community.

Finally, the multicultural studies content of the curriculum will be shaped by responses on the part of individual faculty members and of academic departments/programs to incentives designed to encourage both curricular innovation and new hiring. We seek a judicious balance of old and new. Our curriculum is rich and varied, albeit stronger in some areas than others. To embrace multiculturalism and global education is to grant distortions in the lenses through which we have seen the world and to educate ourselves about the ways in which a strictly Western framework has limited what we see and know.

I welcome comments or questions about these thoughts. If you've read this far, you have my thanks for your generosity of time and attention.

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