The following op-ed appeared in Penn Live on 30 July 2019:
Inclusion
Is the Heart of the American Way
Boise State University’s new president, Marlene Tromp, was
recently pressed by a group of Idaho lawmakers to cease diversity and inclusion
programs for being antithetical to the “Idaho way,” as reported by the
Idaho Statesman.
Universities
create and promote inclusion programs to develop citizens who exhibit the
behaviors Americans expect from our leaders. Sadly, we also recognize the need
to give our students the tools to navigate a world that is likely to
demean or, even worse, discriminate against them.
The
intolerant rhetoric and actions of prominent public officials is agonizing
proof of our nation’s desperate need to learn how to live and thrive as a
diverse and respectful society.
Inclusion
is the heart of the American way. Our history is one of incremental progress
toward an ideal framed by our founders. As an ideal, it was an aspiration that
the architects of our nation failed to achieve in their contemporary realities,
but in the 243 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, our nation has moved step by step
toward true democratic pluralism.
The
path has been painfully slow for the disenfranchised for whom, to paraphrase
Dr. King, justice delayed has been justice denied. The destiny he clearly
articulated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington
remains the prophetic landing place for our nation’s maturity.
This
spring, KQED published a story about Joe Lipton who
recently shared a letter he received from Peanuts
cartoonist Charles Schulz in 1970 when Lipton 10 years old. As part of a school
assignment, Lipton had asked Schulz, “What makes a good citizen?” Schulz
replied:
I think it is more difficult
these days to define what makes a good citizen than it has ever been before.
Certainly, all any of us can do is follow our own conscience and retain faith
in our democracy. Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in
favor of getting back to what they call ‘American Virtues’ who lack this faith
in our country. I believe that our greatest strength lies always in the
protection of our smallest minorities.
Schulz’s
remarks are presciently relevant to our current national crossroads and
evocative of the scripture verse, “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say
to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to
me.’”[1]
We
promote diversity and inclusion on our campuses because they align with our
missions. Like the ideals of the founders, we often fall short of our
aspirations, but, like our nation, we must continue to strive toward the noblest
goals. This is how we fulfill our calling to develop the citizen leaders our
nation and world so desperately need.
We
are counting on them to lift up the smallest voices and to provide a society
that celebrates and respects the rich diversity of all its members. That is the
true meaning of the American Way.
