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Why Should Fulbright Scholars Be ?Diverse??

The U.S. Department of State, according to this recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, ?has been concerned in recent years about the lack of diversity among American applicants.?

This year, for example, only seven of the nearly 760 American scholars come from community colleges, and only 10.6 percent of American students who received Fulbrights are black or Hispanic.

?We?re keenly interested in making sure that the Fulbright looks like the United States,? says Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department?s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs....

Why? Why, that is, should Fulbright Scholars ?look like? the United States? Why not, say, ?think like? or ?worship like? or ?vote like?? Why is ?diversity? always only skin deep?

In any event why is it felt to be necessary for U.S. Fulbright Scholars to be ?diverse?? The only rationale for ?diversity? that has passed legal muster is the contribution it is thought to make to the quality of education in higher education institutions. Not to put too fine a point on it, that means, as I?ve argued a number of times, such as here, that the purpose of, and justification for, ?diversity? is ?to provide a benefit to all the non-minority students, whose education required their being exposed to a certain number of the preferred minorities.? And here:

As I?ve pointed out before on more than one occasion, what Michigan did, and would still do if the citizens of Michigan hadn?t put a stop to it, is deny admission to a bunch of whites and Asians who would have been admitted under a race-neutral, colorblind policy so that other, more fortunate whites and Asians could be exposed to the ?diversity? offered by the preferentially admitted minorities who would not have been admitted under that race-neutral, colorblind policy.

But how does this rationale apply to the Fulbright program? To whom do the ?diverse? Fulbright scholars provide ?diversity?? Not to other Fulbright scholars, but to students and faculty in one of the 140 countries or so where our Fulbrights are sent. Indeed, insofar as the Fulbright program insists on providing ?diversity,? shouldn?t it institute a policy barring American blacks and Hispancis from being sent to predominantly black or Hispanic countries or institutions?

There is another not small problem with using public money in any program attempting to make itself ?look like? America: the courts have not looked kindly on them. Perhaps the most eloquent statement of this judicial disapproval came from Justice Lews Powell in Bakke (thanks to Roger Clegg for the reminder):

If petitioner's purpose is to assure within its student body some specified percentage of a particular group merely because of its race or ethnic origin, such a preferential purpose must be rejected not as insubstantial but as facially invalid. Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids. E. g., Loving v. Virginia, supra, at 11; McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 196; Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

There are, of course, many subsequent examples. Even in Grutter, Hans Bader reminds me, Justice O?Connor affirmed that ?outright racial balancing? is ?patently unconstitutional,? citing not only Bakke but Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 494 (1992) (?Racial balance is not to be achieved for its own sake?).

Designing any program to make its members ?look like the United States? is both outright racial balancing and racial balancing for its own sake.

Full post as published by Discriminations on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).