UCSC Review Winter 1995

On Mission and Diversity by Chancellor Karl S. Pister

Increasingly vital issues of public policy in our society are being formed in such a manner as to divide, rather than unite, the people who comprise it. Thus, the common characteristics of the people, as well as their aspirations for themselves and their families, constitute a force whose potential for uniting the society is too often deliberately avoided or suppressed in the arena of political debate.

Nowhere is this more evident, and ultimately likely to be more destructive, than the impending debate surrounding affirmative action programs. Born during a period when social justice became a political imperative to redress long-standing civil rights injustices to groups of our citizens, programs whose success is a matter of record but whose work is yet incomplete are being called into question. We are being told by some that decisions involving student admissions or faculty and staff appointments in our university should not be based on race, ethnicity, or gender; that such "entitlement" programs are discriminatory. Unfortunately--whether deliberately or not--public discussion of this issue is likely to obscure the fact that race, ethnicity, or gender is but one of a number of factors the University of California considers when it admits students or hires faculty and staff.

To focus only on this aspect of affirmative action misses the much more compelling question: What is the cost to our society of failing to address underrepresentation of certain groups--whether related to gender, race, or ethnicity--in education or in employment? For example, in the state of California the majority of public high school graduates this year will come from so-called minority groups, the majority of whom historically have not participated in postsecondary education at rates commensurate with their presence in the population of the state. Every successful industrialized nation has recognized the importance of an educated workforce in the waning days of this century. Can California, a major nation-state, do otherwise? Can we afford to undereducate the majority of our population? Whom does the University of California serve, and for what purpose?

It is these questions that should be debated, together with the long-term consequences of building prisons in place of schools. Affirmative action is the wrong issue for the people of California, in spite of its apparent current political appeal. We must engage the real issue: the stability and well-being of our society in the 21st century.

In his inaugural speech, the first president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, mindful of our constitutional charter, had this to say about the newly born institution:

It is the University of this State. It must be adapted to this people, to their public and private schools, to their peculiar geographical position, to the requirements of their new society and their undeveloped resources....It is 'of the people and for the people.'

Can one possibly challenge the truth or importance of this prophetic statement today? I find two especially compelling imperatives in this quotation.

First, what are the undeveloped resources of our state? We have reached a level of sustainable development of many of our natural resources, but have left almost untouched large segments of the human resources in California. On purely economic grounds, we as a state and university cannot continue this practice and expect to survive in the 21st century with a reasonable standard of living, given forces both internal and external to the state. The consequence is that we must give as much attention to the development of people as we have given to the development and dissemination of knowledge. These emphases, of course, are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they can and must be viewed as complementary.

Second, if the university is "of the people and for the people," we must ask the question, "Who are the people?" For the first time this year, the majority of the students graduating from our public high schools will come from ethnic groups that heretofore have been termed "minority" groups; by the year 2000 that percentage will have increased to 59 percent. Placing those numbers alongside the present composition of students, faculty, and staff presents in the starkest possible terms the challenge facing us, if we are to be true to the charter of our university. The University of California has an obligation to lead the state in addressing the critical issues and engaging in public discussion of their impact on California's future.

Furthermore, to ignore these data in setting the academic course of the campus, to fail to include a measure of diversity in setting norms for quality in pursuit of our mission, and to fail to take necessary steps to remain on course in meeting the challenge facing our university, campus, and state is to fail in our mission.