Diversity. Why is it good? Why is it a goal of Universities?

I haven’t read all of the replies yet, so I apologize if this has already been stated.

re: the question in the thread title: “Diversity. Why is it good? Why is it a goal of universities?”
We dropped our eldest kid at college for freshman orientation & move in this past weekend. On Saturday during parent orientation, one of the last info sessions was presented by the VP of Student Affairs & Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer of the college that our kid is attending.

I think that what that person had to say on the topic of diversity was spot on and probably answers your question. He highlighted how 58% of the new incoming students are students of color and 34% are 1st gen. He also talked about how the college encourages and tries to foster a learning environment in which students from all walks of life can share and exchange ideas about important topics so that everyone can learn from each other. He said that he believes that one of the best ways we can learn from each other is to listen to points of view that are different from our own experiences…and by doing so in a way that honors and respects each others’ different perspectives (even though you might disagree with each other), that the campus community benefits from that as a whole.

He then went on to talk about some of the violent protests that occurred on college campuses earlier this year in different parts of the country. He said that at D24’s college, although students were free to demonstrate and protest, there were no demonstrations. Mostly because the campus administration purposely set up a bunch of large group meetings and facilitated open debate and discussions amongst students so that everyone could have REAL discussions about the topics being protested elsewhere. He also said that it’s his philosophy that we all need to do less yelling at each other and more listening…because when you listen, you can learn something new, and you might also learn that maybe you have more in common with the person you disagree with than you first realized.

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Exactly. Some variations they may actively value in their mix, some they may be more just observing as a side effect of their intended mix, and in fact different colleges may put a given thing into different categories.

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I may have said this before in another post, this is more for non-STEM majors where different perspectives would help in a class. In classes like Calculus or Physics, you’re not going to debate anything. You have to solve problems, a lot of them, and attend labs. If you want to say that dividing by zero is ok or Einstein is overrated, go for it, won’t help the class all that much. The professor will probably call you in their office hours and say, keep that stuff to yourself.

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It wasn’t something done in lectures/classrooms. It was set up as other on-campus debate/discussion events in the large auditorium on campus.

In my experience, people frequently underestimate the amount of creativity that goes into STEM. People think the humanities = creativity, but STEM = problems with 1 correct answer. But it ain’t like that at all. Good STEM is breathtakingly creative.

A good math teacher absolutely is interested in discussing the arguments for and against dividing by zero. I doubt there has ever been a student destined to be a mathematician who just said “ok” and didn’t want to discuss this. As for Einstein being overrated…I hope in my lifetime there does come along a physicist who makes Einstein look overrated!

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