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The Regents of the University of California
 

What's on my mind

Why more diversity matters at UCLA

BY RAYMOND KNAPP

The UCLA College of Arts and Letters faculty are currently deciding whether or not to institute a diversity requirement for undergraduates. For many who remember the debates in the early 1990s, when UCLA chose — alone among the UCs — not to establish a diversity requirement, this will seem oddly familiar. But the requirement now being considered is a substantial improvement over its predecessors, in large part because the groundwork has been much more carefully prepared.

Over the past dozen years, various initiatives encouraged the development of diversity courses within many disciplines. During the reform of the College’s General Education (GE), completed in spring 2002, special attention to diversity confirmed that these efforts had been successful.

In the year following the GE reform, the Undergraduate Council developed the current proposal after reviewing carefully the diversity requirements at other UC campuses, considering the precise language UCLA has developed to describe diversity content within its curricula, consulting with faculty and student leadership, and reviewing GE courses within the society and culture and arts and humanities foundation areas, nearly half of which seemed plausible candidates for diversity credit.

The proposal was discussed, further refined and ultimately approved by several campus committees. One of these, the GE Governance Committee, then conducted a more rigorous review of the proposal’s feasibility in spring 2004, with help from the Undergraduate Council and the Undergraduate Students Association Council, and found that over a third of the courses within society and culture and arts and humanities have already made a strong case for diversity credit. Subsequent research revealed that the courses on their list already carry sufficient enrollment to sustain the demands of the proposed requirement.

Because it can be satisfied within the existing GE structure and course list, the requirement would need neither additional coursework from students nor new courses. Moreover, we know the diversity courses to be excellent — they have been carefully reviewed within committee structures created to effect and sustain the recent reform to GE. And — answering an objection to previous proposals — these courses are all grounded within well-established academic disciplines. Finally, in the long-term, GE Governance will be able to maintain the integrity of the course list through procedures being developed for the review of GE.

Why should UCLA institute a diversity requirement when so many of its GE courses, along with more specialized courses offered by UCLA’s centers and departments, already address diversity?

Even if most UCLA undergraduates are already satisfying the requirement, it will accomplish several important things. It will provide a public affirmation of UCLA’s commitment to teaching diversity; although UCLA may already teach diversity to the vast majority of students, that fact has been virtually hidden, not only from the public, but also from us. More importantly, it will provide a mechanism for ensuring that courses addressing diversity issues will continue to be developed and offered at UCLA.

Knapp is professor of musicology, chair of GE Governance and secretary of the College’s Faculty Executive Committee.