Chancellor Nancy Cantor: Diversity & Unwitting Racism

23 March 2009

Chancellor Nancy Cantor
Office of the Chancellor
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY  13244 

Dear Chancellor Cantor:

Diversity is a center piece of your ideal for the university and Syracuse University in particular.  Just so, a reality that must be kept in mind is that diversity admits of many configurations.  After all, there is a very straightforward sense in which the plantations of American Slavery admitted of diversity along various dimensions, from skin color to type of work, with respect to Blacks.  But, of course, that diversity was riveted with the morally obnoxious conception of Blacks as inferior.  What I infer from this is a very simple and poignant truth, namely that what we want is not just diversity, but a certain conception of diversity.  Thus, for the reasons that I shall give in what follows, it has to be a grave mistake to privilege diversity above all else.

Talk of diversity by a university president who does not give pride of place to the importance of intellectual excellence has three very untoward consequences: (1) It enables those who have doubts about the intellectual wherewithal of minorities to continue in their doubt by citing the silence of the university president in this regard.  (2) The failure to do so deprives those minorities plagued with self-doubt owing to the stereotypes of intellectual inferiority, with a deep affirmation of the excellences of which they are capable.  (3) Most problematically, when diversity is dramatically privileged above intellectual excellence, minority people are effectively turned into mere human pegs and are thus dehumanized; for what is made to count most is not the set of excellences that each minority person contributes to the university but merely the fact that each such person is a place-holder in the tapestry of diversity.  Alas, there is far too little distance between that conception of diversity and the racism of yesteryear. 

I beseech you, Chancellor Cantor, not to lose sight of the fact that an unarticulated firmly held belief in the intellectual wherewithal of minorities can never be a substitute for the passionately and publicly espoused conviction that minorities will better society by the intellectual excellences that they bring to it.  Nothing can take the place of affirming vividly the excellences that each and every student brings to the campus; and a conception of diversity that privileges diversity above all else, leaves little if any room for the cultivation and sanctification of those intellectual virtues that enrich our humanity in a way that diversity alone simply cannot do. 

The ideal of sexual equality serves to illustrate this point.  We expect men who believe in sexual equality to praise the intellectual talents of women.  We expect men to express both their admiration and appreciation for the work of women in the field.  This ideal is rightly given expression in the public sphere; and it stands as an ineliminable marker of a man’s commitment to sexual equality.  We correctly expect men to affirm women as moral and intellectual equals—and not merely as creatures to whom men are inclined to give assistance. 

Just as men do not truly take women seriously if men do not acknowledge and affirm the intellectual virtues of women, it is no less true that we cannot take minorities seriously if we do not acknowledge and affirm the intellectual virtues of minorities. 

It may very well be your view, Chancellor Cantor, that intellectual excellence in all its forms is a consequence that necessarily follows in the wake of diversity.  But this is not what you say.  Nor. again, is it in this consequence that you rejoice.  Your silence here is deafening. 

When I look minority students in the face, I would hope that I could remind them of your abiding hope—as evidenced by your remarks here, there, and everywhere—in the intellectual excellences which they can bring to bear upon the university, the society, and the world.  Alas, I cannot do that. 

As you know, one of the defining features of racism against Blacks has been the insistence that Blacks are intellectually bereft.  This is what Thomas Jefferson thought.  This is what Alex de Tocqueville thought.  If you would have me believe that you think no such thing, then what I need to hear from you is not just that diversity is a good thing.  I also need to hear you affirm loudly and clearly the wherewithal of Blacks and other minorities to command respect, and thus your respect, through the intellectual excellences that they exhibit. 

Let me be unmistakably clear.  The issue for me is not whether diversity is a good thing.  Surely, it is.  You have received emails from me that were sent to me by students ranging over a number of ethnic groups.  These emails are an everlasting affirmation in the intellectual firmament of my life.  Thus, I admire your wish to reach across Route 81.  Just so, I am profoundly aware of the fact that it is the intellectual affirmation of these very students which has meant so very much to them.  What is more, what ineluctably follows in the wake of these minority students being recognized for the intellectual excellences that they exhibit is an abiding affirmation of their ethnic identity. 

The Pillar of Excellence letters that I began sending out in 2007 (copies of which have been sent to you each semester) stand as a marvelous illustration of this point.  I have no idea whether Mr. Bloodyfield (not the real name, of course) is Black or Latino.  He and I discussed this matter with amusement; and he did not bother to clarify things, which was just fine with me.  What I do know, however, is that the Pillar of Excellence letter that he received was enormously treasured as a measure of his intellectual contribution to my course.  His mother shared the letter with his high school principle who in turn wrote to me to express his delight in Dangerfield receiving such a letter.  Whether the recipient of a Pillar of Excellence letter has been Arabic or White or Jewish or Black or Native American or Latino or whatever, the significance attached to the intellectual affirmation of these letters continues to surpass anything that I ever expected when I first conceived of the idea. 

No one needs me to clarify her or his ethnic identity.  By contrast, everyone revels in the genuine intellectual affirmation that a professor affords her or him, as my Pillar of Excellence letters make unequivocally clear.  This is why I know in a profoundly experiential way that it is a fundamental mistake to privilege diversity above all us. 

It is my prayer and hope that you will repair matters by giving intellectual excellence the proper and immutable place it should have in your conception of diversity.  In these trying times, there can be little doubt that the underprivileged of all backgrounds are very much in need of help.  All the same, we must not exploit that desperate need by rendering such individuals mere place-holders in the tapestry of diversity.  For that is but a palliative that in end eviscerates the humanity of these individuals whilst allowing Syracuse University to bask in the image of doing good. 

A university is an institution whose raison d’être is that of fostering intellectual excellence.  When the intellectual wherewithal of its primary constituents, namely students, is affirmed and underwritten, then new life will be breathed into the idea of diversity as individuals look across differences and go on to see and take delight in the richness of humanity in each and every person.  When things are as they should be diversity is none other than the majestic attendant of intellectual excellence.  Surely, it is our common humanity that should count more than the differences, which from an evolutionary standpoint, are ever so nugatory.   

Necessarily, then, to privilege diversity above all is, on a number of accounts, to widely miss the mark.  Or so it is if you believe that the fundament lesson to be learnt from a university is surely not that human beings should be treated as mere place-holders in the tapestry of diversity. 

Most respectfully, I am

Sincerely yours,

_______________

Laurence Thomas