Morality, Responsibility, and the University: Studies in Academic Ethics

12. Diversity within University Faculties

12 DIVERSITY WITHIN UNIVERSITY FACULTIES Alan H. Goldman As a new generation of women and minority group members turns college age and enters the job market, a generation with far fewer victims of discrimination in lower schools than previous generations , one hears less call for affirmative action in university appointments for reasons of compensatory justice and more call for diversity per se among faculties. Diversity in itself is held to be desirable apart from considerations of compensation. In this discussion I shall evaluate this appeal, distinguishing different forms or senses of diversity, different contexts in which the appeal is made, and different justifying arguments. I That diversity within college and university populations is of value is not a new idea. It has firm precedent in the practice of many universities of seeking geographic, and more recently racial, gender, and ethnic, diversity among the student population. In the 1978 Supreme Court decision in the Bakke case, Justice Lewis Powell, who was the swing vote for the majority, recognized the quest for a diverse student body as meeting the test for a compelling state interest.1 The familiar argument that he cited claims that students from different backgrounds bring different experiences and outlooks to the educational context. These distinct points of view allegedly enrich the educational experience of all students and better equip them to deal later with the heterogeneous world outside the university. Insofar as students are collective or cooperative truth seekers, there may lurk in the background premises of this argument as well the Millian assumption that truth in any area of inquiry best emerges from the clash of differing 218 Diversity within Faculties I 219 opinions and viewpoints, that all points of view relevant to a dispute should be represented, and that persons from different backgrounds are more likely to represent all those viewpoints in classes and discussions . Assuming for the sake of the argument the soundness of the position regarding the value ofdiversity among student populations, there remains the serious question of how much this value ought to count when measured against more straightforward academic qualifications. Questions of both fairness and utility are often begged in the quest for geographical and other sorts of diversity among students, although these questions are made somewhat less pressing to the extent that more orthodox criteria prove unpredictive of performance at the college level. My question here regards the extent to which the argument can be extended from students to faculty. How is the case for diversity among faculty members similar to, stronger, or weaker than the case for student diversity? II Certain forms of diversity within particular academic departments of a university seem rather uncontroversially to be considered valuable. If there are different recognized areas within a field, such as ethics, epistemology, and logic within philosophy, then there seems to be good reason to seek specialists in all the major areas. At a minimum, the major areas of the field should be covered in undergraduate curricula , where students generally choose majors without regard for particular specialties within fields. This sort of consideration does not enter the quest for diversity among students, although some universities might seek to diversify their predeclared majors. In this particular respect, then, the case for faculty diversity appears stronger than the case for students. But the important point here is that we are talking about diversity among academic areas, and so there is no suggestion yet of an argument for appointing faculty according to nonacademic criteria. And once more, even the value of this sort of diversity must be weighed against the value of appointing the best person available in the broader field. Many departments, my own included, have opted to pursue the best candidate available, regardless of specialty, at least once the major areas of the subject can be adequately covered in undergraduate courses. Somewhat more controversial is the value of seeking not only specialists in different content areas of a subject but specialists who 220 I ALAN H. GOLDMAN employ differing and opposed methodologies, such as phenomenologists or hermeneuticists as well as analytic philosophers. One might wonder why analytic philosophers, who view their methods alone as proper for confronting and teaching philosophical problems, if they constitute the majority within a department, would seek to appoint those whose methods they deem inoptimal at best. How can we advocate teaching falsehoods (by our ownlights) or teaching according to methods that we consider pedagogically wrong? Similar...