[In this excerpt published in 1993, anthropologist Renato Rosaldo discusses the challenges and opportunities posed by increasing diversity of students and faculty in universities and colleges in the United States since the 1960s.] The past twenty-five years of increasing inclusion in higher education show a clear pattern [….] Initial efforts concentrated on getting people in the door. Institutions of higher learning appeared to tell those previously excluded, "Come in, sit down, shut up. You're welcome here as long as you conform with our norms." This was the Green Card phase of short-term provisional admission in the name of increasing institutional inclusion and change. In time, institutions found that they had problems retaining newly admitted students, faculty, and staff. The newcomers entered only to exit shortly thereafter as dropouts. […] Colleges and universities were not hospitable to their new members. Problems of retention for racialized minority students had to be faced. Such efforts as building a critical mass of minority students, creating ethnic studies centers, establishing positions for minority deans, opening minority student centers, and developing ethnic theme houses helped construct an environment where minority students could become long-term, contributing, more fully enfranchized members of their colleges and universities. More recently, the issue of institutional responsiveness to educational content has come to the foreground. In one case I witnessed, students stunned a university president by taking over his office and then demanding an education that responded to their concerns, one that recognized their existence and their distinctive goals in pursuing higher learning. Certain changes in institutional norms, curricula, and pedagogies appear crucial for democratizing educational institutions over the coming decade. At one time students and faculty in women's and minority communities debated intensely about whether their programs should risk dilution by becoming mainstream or retain purity by remaining separate. By now many agree on the need for both. […] To articulate divergent perspectives and to inspire coming generations, diversity must be present in institutional authority. How otherwise can diverse groups articulate their intellectual visions to greatest effect? How otherwise can diverse groups become full citizens of the [university]? Why then do institutions need safe houses? Safe houses can foster self-esteem and promote a sense of belonging in often alien institutions. Such factors have proven critical in the retention of students and should not be minimized. The benefits of creating safe houses also include intellectual contributions. Safe houses can be places where diverse groups—under the banners of ethnic studies, feminist studies, or gay and lesbian studies—talk together and become articulate about their intellectual projects. When they enter mainstream seminars such students speak with clarity and force about their distinctive projects, concerns, and perspectives. The class is richer and more complex, if perhaps less comfortable, for its broadened range of perspectives. […] Achieving diversity in classrooms follows a distinctive pattern. It produces instant changes and calls for a series of further changes. One reaction is predictable. People who once had a monopoly on privilege and authority will suddenly experience relative deprivation. […] Diversity in classrooms does more than arouse predictable discomfort and resistance. The moment classrooms become diverse, change begins. There is no standing still. New students do not laugh at the old jokes. Even those teachers who do nothing to revise their yellowed sheets of lecture notes know that their words have taken on new meanings. New pedagogies begin. New pedagogies include new courses and new texts. One crucial ingredient involves affirmative action for course readings (and for works cited in publications). Teachers find new ways to seek out pertinent works of high quality by people of color, women, gays, and lesbians. Looking in the usual places and in the usual ways will not produce change. In a graduate seminar I offered a few years ago, students complained about the lack of diverse content. "What," I asked, "do you mean? You have different cultures in the course—*Nuers, Tikopias, Navahos." "No," the students replied, "we want books by and not just about members of different cultures." […] Once diversity is valued as an intellectual and human resource, teachers cannot be equally versed in all texts and issues. Instructors will probably find themselves listening to their students with the care and intensity that they once reserved for their own speech. The pain also comes from how closely or distantly students feel connected with the readings. New course readings often tug at their hearts and involve their feelings more deeply and directly than earlier readings did. Classrooms then produce a range of feelings, from intimate to distant, and the feelings have to be addressed. In my experience such classrooms, even at their most uncomfortable, have produced student work of exceptional quality. […] [… E]ducational democracy involves not only honoring other cultures in their unique integrity, but also working simultaneously with a diversity of human beings—women and men, gays and straights, people of color and Anglos. We are all equal partners in a shared project of renegotiating the sense of belonging, inclusion, and full enfranchisement in our major institutions. Such renegotiations require time, patience, and careful listening. * Nuers, Tikopias, and Navahos are ethnic groups in South Sudan, Melanesia, and America respectively. ( This excerpt is taken from Rosaldo, Renato. 1993. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (pp. x-xvii). Beacon Press).