Colleges and universities shortchange their students when they view courses on world cultures and United States diversity as interchangeable, or leave attention to United States diversity optional and elective. Education for participation in United States cultural and democratic pluralism is preparation for citizenship and leadership. It deserves its own time and space in the curriculum. It is important that programs and departments involve students in extensive opportunities to practice deliberative discourse on subjects about which they care intensely. All graduates in all programs must learn to listen to others' experiences and challenges, explore multiple ways of knowing and forming knowledge, and open themselves to experiences of modifying their own understandings based on what they have learned from others' contributions.
Students learn to listen to one another in order to understand more completely.
Equally important, through their immersion in topics where no single perspective can be adequate to the complexity of the issue, students discover both the limitations of any particular framework and, by extension, their inescapable dependence on difference as a source of greater understanding. Please see our overview of the American Commitments Initiative. The Initiative also created Community Seminars on Diversity and Democracy. Developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the University of Maryland , in collaboration with Diversity Connections and DiverseCD, available at Diversity Links.