In the first university, teachers and students form a homogeneous community. From similar backgrounds, they bring similar experiences, assumptions, and perspectives. In the second, the community is diverse. An American Indian medical student is part of the conversation about rural medicine. The classm ates of the aspiring international-business student include recent immigrants from Mexico and Vietnam.
Many people support diversity in higher education primarily on grounds of social justice.
They want to open the doors of opportunity to those in our society who have been marginalized or excluded. But the case we want to make hereas educators responsib le for leading Washington's six public universitiesis the educational case for diversity, a case we believe is equally compelling and less widely understood. To learn in the company of people different from oneself is to learn more richly, more deeply, and in more complex ways than is otherwise possible. These are genuine educational resources, both in the classroom and in the more informal settings in which our students, faculty, and staff learn from one another. As it broadens knowledge, diversity also spurs the testing and challenging of students' assumptionsa process essential to education.