DURHAM, N.C. – Inclusivity was the buzzword on Wednesday at the annual Diversity in Higher Education Conference at Duke University in Durham, N.C. It permeated conversations of modifying higher education to more readily accept non-mainstream cultures, changing what people consider to be the color of the race problem, and making online education and technology more effective for diverse students. The challenge: making it all happen.
“Everyone seems to be onboard with diversity and inclusion, but the struggle is how to operationalize it,” said Dr. Benjamin D. Reese Jr., vice president of the Office for Institutional Equity at both Duke University and the Duke University Health System.
Duke University and the Duke University Health System collaborated with the New York-based Conference Board organization in staging the two-day conference, which concludes today.
According to Dr. Louis Mendoza, associate vice provost for equity and diversity at the University of Minnesota, higher education needs to give minority groups a venue to reclaim their cultural and ethnic identity and respect those characteristics. It isn’t enough to open the door to minority groups, expecting them to conform completely to the entrenched institutional philosophy.
“Diversity must move to the center of educational excellence,” Mendoza said. “It can’t be a case of telling a minority student or faculty ‘you can come in and play, but then what are we going to do with you?’ These individuals deserve a seat at the table as a social, intellectual and economic asset.”
Honoring diversity in community research and including populations in those endeavors are also important, he said. Many groups resent being studied if they are denied the opportunity to offer their own insights and perspectives.
But reaching the point where minority individuals or groups feel true equity can be difficult, Mendoza said. Some schools view themselves as post-diverse—institutions with enough minority and international students—and others don’t want to upset the comfortable status quo.
