Diversity, per se, is not a bad thing. Indeed, it’s a very good thing. Everyone benefits from the experience of going to school with others unlike themselves. But the idea that one’s experience and values are deeply shaped by gender and race – facts about oneself that can never be changed – encourages the view that our power to reflect critically on our values and to change them is severely limited. And that idea strikes at the heart of the liberating promise of all liberal education. Students who accept this view will not see themselves as standing on the common ground of their humanity, but be inclined, instead, to think that others who do not have the same defining, and unchangeable, characteristics must approach the question of life’s meaning in fundamentally different ways. That undermines the spirit of shared engagement on which any authentic and enlightening approach to the question depends.
Here is the whole interview.
