However, three in five questioned say they believe that the nation is growing apart rather than together. They support diversity in higher education. They recognize that diversity is important to student success and they believe that diversity education can help bring the country together. Daniel Yankelovich, chairman of DYG Inc., said the study took pains to avoid using the emotion-laden term of affirmative action because it would have skewed the findings. Diversity isn't seen that way.
Diversity is seen as everyone wins, as advancing the goals that everyone embraces.
This is great news because it's counterintuitive. We may have misled ourselves about what people really think. The findings of California respondents generally tracked along the same lines as national respondents, showing strong support for college diversity. What I see is strong support across the board. Corrigan said he was encouraged, for instance, by the public's positive views on ethnic studies courses, which have been criticized as intellectually soft by UC Regent Ward Connerly and other conservatives.