Our students are at a point on a trajectory when they are ready to be challenged in perceptions and habits, when they are ready to see different possibilities of the self. We, the University, help students achieve these goals by providing a rich environment. The scale alone of the University of Michigan fosters many dimensions of diversity. There are some categories of life experiences in America that are extraordinarily likely to be brought to the surface when people of diverse backgrounds come together. In that sense, race matters a lot, just as many other things matter, too.
Diversity is an enormous opportunity for human growth.
You run into people from towns you can't imagine having grown up in. These are opportunities we owe to our students. They are very critical. We have the responsibility to create the richest educational environment we can to challenge our students and ourselves to look beyond the typical, beyond the routine. One of the deepest lessons we can learn is about the commonality of human beings.