The Meaning of Inclusion
March 4, 2005
When I was appointed Chancellor at UC Berkeley last September, I was not surprised to find a campus community with an unrelenting commitment to leadership in both academics and public service. What was surprising, even shocking, was another discovery. Coming from the presidency of the University of Toronto, which has one of the most diverse student bodies in the world, I anticipated a similar diversity and camaraderie across cultural lines at Berkeley. Sadly, this is not so. During my first months at Cal, I have witnessed too many examples of alienation, mistrust and division among distinct components of our student body. This situation is most evident among the Latino, African American, and Native American students on campus. I believe that it is caused in large part by the dramatic drop in their numbers.
Minority representation in the Cal student body has been dropping since the passage of Proposition 209. It is not surprising that this is a topic of tension among our students and faculty. While the overall drop in underrepresented minorities is appalling, the situation for African Americans is truly at the crisis point. My first inkling of the problem came on the day my appointment was announced. During the open comment period, the second speaker stepping to the microphone was a young African American graduate student. Like so many other students I have talked to subsequently, he explained in clear, quiet words that he was concerned about declining enrollment of Black students at the University. Next fall, he said, only 39 African American male freshmen would enroll at Berkeley.
This student did not go on to say what I have heard so often since: what it feels like to be the only Black student in a class when an issue involving multiculturalism comes up and all eyes turn on you; what pressure it puts on a student to be 18 years old and regarded as the sole representative of her race; why it is a tragedy for California when there are only dozens of African American men in the freshman class in a student body of 30,000, especially when you know that the missing parts of the talent pool are your own brothers and sisters, your neighbors and friends, trapped in disadvantaged schools and living in a world of low expectations.
The people of California, in what I believe was an honest attempt to create a non-discriminatory system, passed Proposition 209. However, they do not see everyday what I see on campus: that an effort at non-discrimination has in fact resulted in the creation of an environment that many of students of color view as explicitly discriminatory. The reduction of numbers for African American students enrolled as freshmen for instance, from 260 in 1997 to just 108 students this year, has meant the loss of an essential, supportive community for Black students and the resultant creation of an environment which many view as actively hostile.
Unfortunately, all too often excellence is used as a surrogate for exclusion. It is significant that the graduation rates of African Americans at UC Berkeley before Proposition 209, are closely similar to the rates now. Far from weeding out students who could not compete here, the elimination of race as a consideration in admissions has actually prevented many of California's most talented students from the opportunity of a Berkeley education.
In my view, it is unrealistic to think that one can judge a person's likelihood of success at Berkeley without taking into account their race and gender. I spent many years on the faculty at MIT. For decades, women were significantly underrepresented in the undergraduate body at MIT. It was decided that this meant that MIT was missing out on exceptionally talented young women who could make great contributions to science and engineering. Accordingly, MIT aggressively recruited talented young women from around the country and in the admissions process explicitly took into account negative environmental effects on their SAT scores. It was found that it took at most two semesters for these women to catch up to their male peers. More importantly, by the time of graduation the failure/withdrawal rate of these women was significantly less than that of their male classmates. This story is not intended as a direct parallel to Berkeley, but I use it to point out that I believe that at Berkeley we are similarly missing out on exceptionally talented African American, Latino and Native American students, to the detriment of us all.
One often hears that the real problem for diversity at Berkeley is that the elite private universities are luring away California's top minority students. However, in my view, it is far from a disaster for California if some of our very talented students of color end up at Harvard, Yale or Princeton. It is a disaster, however, if they do not enroll where their abilities are challenged and their talents fully developed. The problem, as I stated above, is the large and growing missing part of the talent pool. Indeed, for many talented minority candidates, be they Black, Latino or Native American, their application folders never make it into the hands of an admission officer at a top Californian university. Simply put, their folders do not exist. We haven't been able to reach out to them so too many have not met the technical requirements for admission. Many of these students never complete all of the admissions requirements, never apply to Berkeley and never know that they could and should aspire to this great institution. All of us, parents, teachers, principals, guidance counselors and certainly Berkeley faculty and staff have a role in reducing the missing talent pool.
I have great admiration for the elite private universities and their genuine attempts at inclusion. However, in the end, their student bodies are simply too small to have a major impact on American society as a whole. Rather it is public universities such as Berkeley which must rise to the task of providing true equal opportunity. I believe that it is the policies of our public universities in California which will ultimately determine whether or not we are truly an inclusive society.
Racial inclusion is a public good not a private benefit. Indeed, the president of the University of Mexico once said to me that the single most important skill for the 21st century which a student must learn as an undergraduate is what he termed "intercultural competence." It is only through experience with and appreciation of other cultures that our citizens will be able to navigate successfully in today's globalized society.
In fact, this is part of our evolving mission as a Land Grant Institution. As Professor Karl Pister, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of California, Santa Cruz has written our "mission initially focused on developing people to devise means to extract the wealth latent in the natural resources of the State". Since the new gold in California is its human resources, Professor Pister says, "our new challenge is how to mine and develop the human resources latent in one of the most diverse populations found in any nation-state - to remain competitive in the global economy of the 21st century, thus providing for the common good of its citizens."
Maintaining that competitive advantage has driven several leaders from private industry to devise their own innovative academic preparation programs to identify and deepen the pool of eligible minority candidates for UC and UC Berkeley. On the Berkeley campus many of our students are actively engaged in private efforts to recruit more students of color. Last month we opened a multicultural center to address programmatically many of the alienation and mistrust issues that arise because of the paucity of underrepresented students on campus. In addition, the administration is reaching out to ethnic media outlets to advertise that UC Berkeley is a viable educational option for the communities they serve.
However, we need to do much more. The world's premier public teaching and research university must lead the discussion about the unintended consequences of Proposition 209. We must be the intellectual home for research and education in intercultural competence. As a beginning I have allocated 6 new faculty positions …. Finally, we must find innovative ways to make this campus the inclusive and welcoming environment to which it aspires.
This call to action supports and extends the efforts of previous Chancellors and other members of the Berkeley community. As the current leader of this campus, I feel a moral obligation to address the issue of inclusion head on because ultimately it is a fight for our soul as an institution. Inclusion is about leadership and excellence, principles that California and its leading public university UC Berkeley has long well modeled, and might again.