IHE has the story. Good? Bad? Indifferent?
Cyber security professional here -reliably determining when a computational artifact (file, etc.) was created is *hard*. This is sorta why…
7 responses to ““Diversity” course requirement finally approved at UCLA”
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I'm a bit surprised they haven't had one before. When I was an undergrad at UW-Madison (1999-2002), the ethnic studies requirement had been in place for quite some time. (I still remember confusing all the other members of my Jewish-American lit course when they found out I wasn't in fact Jewish.) Expanding such a requirement to cover other forms of diversity seems like a good thing to me.
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I'll punt: the proof will be in the pudding. It will be interesting to learn responses from students and faculty three, six, ten years from now. I see among the statements opposing the requirement a concern about a "ghettoization" effect as students opt for courses associated with their own identity groups. Perhaps. This was an important issue as Women's Studies was emerging. There was worry that relegating WS to its own department would reduce its impact across the curriculum. Even so, I think it's fair to say WS has had a positive effect in the long run.
While I'm sure most of the faculty in favor of the diversity requirement are genuinely committed to doing what's best for the students and the University, it also strikes me as trendy tokenism. This is always a risk when a large organization, such as a university or large corporation, aims to wade into a politically charged matter hoping to enlist popular support. Is it ironic that UCLA's Anderson School of Management already puts diversity front and center in tis promotional material? http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/degrees/mba-program/anderson-culture/diversity Would this be as controversial had UCLA required students to take an appropriate business course?
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Very surprised that such courses are not more common. UMass requires one course in US diversity, one in global diversity (See http://www.umass.edu/diversity/academic.php) and so does its satellite campus where I am graduating from (Boston). One good thing I see about it is that some philosophy courses fulfill the requirement, so that many students who otherwise wouldn't have taken any philosophy courses end up taking (and loving!) a philosophy class.
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I do worry that this measure blurs the line between what is Important and what is Intellectually Interesting. Now I would find these issues both Important and Intellectually Interesting, but I could completely understand someone who recognises their Importance without wanting to dedicate 14 weeks and $4,000 (say) to pursuing the intellectual study of these issues.
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"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." — Chesterton
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." — Thoreau
It seems to me that failure to appreciate diversity is a false devil, and that requiring a "diversity course" is simply hacking at the branches of evil. I do not know if UCLA has an ethics requirement as well, but I doubt that a campaign to require a course on love (or justice — not merely "social justice," but justice in the broadest sense — or courage, or what-have-you) would have received nearly as much support and publicity as this one. (But of course, students who are taught properly to love and to be just will appreciate diversity — perhaps even more so than students who have taken a diversity course!)
I wonder whether UCLA is formalizing band-aid pro-diversity measure to signal its pro-diversity values rather than conducting the difficult work required to strike at the "root" of evil and shape the values and character of its students.
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It's good! These are important matters for students to understand to live as citizens in a diverse society such as our own.
My university has a "US Diversity" requirement. I think that is an OK approach, and the definition of the requirement is interesting: the courses ought to cover 2 out of 3 (at least) of issues related to gender, race, and ethnicity. (I'm not sure whether I think race exists, really; and I'm not sure how, if it all, one can divide race from ethnicity–smarter people can figure this out). I think I would prefer a diversity requirement that allowed students to consider global issues of diversity (like, say, the place of people of Korean descent in Japanese society), but a US Diversity requirement is better than none at all.
I'm currently chair of my university's general education committee. I can understand the arguments here. On the face of it, repeated rejections of this sort of requirement by the majority of the faculty, and even the number of no votes on this vote of approval, seems sort of shocking in 2015. It seems like people should recognize these are important issues. However, there are a lot of departments with extensive major requirements–in my school, that includes biology, engineering, and music, theater, and dance–and people in those departments are not enthusiastic about adding requirements that go above and beyond current gen. ed. and major requirements. Practically, it means that a major in a field like engineering will likely have to take more than the required number of credits to graduate. As a great believer in general education and the liberal arts, I don't see this as a really serious concern, but I can see how students and faculty in some departments might be concerned.
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I'm torn – I think it's an ineffectual requirement, but certainly a step in the right direction.
I attended an institution with a mandatory core curriculum. All students were (and still are) required to take a year-long course in western european philosophy, a year-long course in western european literature, a semester-long western european music survey course, and a semester-long western european art survey course. To balance out all of this eurocentrism, we were required to take a single class – from a stock list drawn from the relevant departments – on almost subject at all from any other country. There's naturally something absurd about this. A universities' core or general education requirements can often implicitly espouse which disciplines are considered worthwhile. As a nonwhite student, it certainly spoke to me that the european courses (multiple courses, taken over the first two years) were compulsory and systematic while the global requirement could be satisfied by taking either 'Sex in the Caribbean' or 'Chinese Pottery', as the university was indifferent. I ended up taking a course on the modern middle east that has served me well over the years. While I can't deny the requirement had a flavor of tokenism, I'd prefer an ineffectual gesture any day over nothing at all.
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