Speeches and statementsDocumenting the Differences Racial and Ethnic Diversity MakesUncovering, Discussing and Tranforming the University President B. Joseph White Good morning. It's a pleasure to welcome you to the conference. Though others have done all the hard work, this conference is, in a way, a dream come true for me. The reason is that I served as interim president at the University of Michigan during the year the affirmative action cases — "Gratz" and "Grutter" — were being prepared for argument before the United States Supreme Court. I had the privilege of working with the two talented attorneys who defended the University, John Payton of Wilmer Cutler and Pickering, and Maureen Mahoney of Latham and Watkins. The cases were a tremendous team effort involving the University's General Counsel, the deans of the Law School and the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, our admissions staff and the Regents of the University. We viewed the cases as historic and deeply consequential for the University and the nation. For the University, at stake was our freedom to make judgments about assembling a student body that would maximize learning for all and ensure that the gateway of opportunity, which is what an education at a great university is, would be managed wisely and fairly. For the nation, at stake was completing, hopefully over the next quarter century, as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, the work begun by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Affirmative action is an imperfect but necessary tool that has made important contributions to that work. But there was something else at stake in these cases. I knew about it as the former dean of the Business School at the University of Michigan. And that was the ability to maintain our value to the many stakeholders who depend on great universities to assemble, educate, develop and graduate a diverse group of talented young people so they can go on to do the work — all the work — of the world’s largest, oldest, most successful and most diverse democracy, which is our country, the United States of America. How did I know this was at stake? Because in the mid-1990s, when as dean I asked representatives of the many companies that recruited our students what they most valued about the University of Michigan Business School, their answer was: "Our ability to hire the men and women we need to create a diverse work force and a diverse leadership cadre." When the affirmative action cases were filed against the University of Michigan, these corporate leaders were very concerned. Because even though the business school was not targeted in the cases, we knew that if the University lost the law school and LS&A cases, we would be next. Anticipating this, the corporate leaders said to me, "Understand, if your school is prohibited from recruiting a diverse student body, we will be forced to leave you and go to other schools, especially the privates, to hire the talent we need." I called then-President Lee Bollinger and told him all this. As a result, more than 50 amicus briefs were filed by U.S. companies supporting the University in the Supreme Court cases. I believe that these briefs from corporate America, along with the testimony of the U.S. military about the vital importance of diversity in its leadership ranks, played a major role in enabling the University of Michigan to prevail. The reason is that these companies and the Army, Navy and Air Force were free from the suspicion of political correctness and liberal bias with which we in the academy have to contend. Their arguments were highly pragmatic: for America to continue to be the world's greatest diverse democracy, for America to work, we must be a highly inclusive society — and our great universities must have the freedom to recruit all of America's most talented young people. As your program brochure correctly states, the Supreme Court's decisions in "Gratz" and "Grutter" did limit the formulaic use of race in college admissions decisions. I think this was a proper judgment by the Court because our approach had become, in certain ways, too mechanistic rather than thoughtful and carefully balanced. But, the University's core argument did, ultimately, prevail. Now, again quoting from your brochure, as a result colleges and universities may implement affirmative action policies in which race is used as a factor in admissions to create a diverse environment that leads to positive educational outcomes. Ensuring these positive educational outcomes is a serious responsibility. I am so pleased and grateful that you have convened this conference to undertake the hard work of documenting the differences that diversity makes so that we can, in fact, fulfill that responsibility. We know from simple observation that diversity by itself may lead to all sorts of outcomes — some of them wonderful, like broader perspectives and greater creativity, some of them awful, like segregation and even violence. So we must not leave the outcomes of diversity to chance. Our job in the university is to ensure that we take the actions necessary to ensure inclusion and community values and practices that produce the positive results we seek and which, indeed, we have promised to American society. I thank you for your participation today and for your contributions to this vital work. As I said in my very first remarks to the University more than a year ago, one of my goals as president is that the University of Illinois will be a model of a diverse community in which all our members can learn, grow and thrive. Thank you for doing your part to make that dream a reality. Thank you. |
