diversity of Christian campuses

A few weeks ago I commented on an Inside Higher Ed piece concerning racial diversity on college campuses and on their promotional materials (see here). Today's Inside Higher Ed has this piece on the diversity of Christian college campuses. I have a couple thoughts.

1. First, this is good news. Diversifying Christian campuses, especially more conservative/evangelical campuses such as the one I proudly serve, is arguably more difficult than diversifying public or private non-religious institutions because requirements other than race have significant impact on the racial makeup of the student body. Christian campuses often have denominational affiliations that constrain the cultural and theological changes they can make to attract students from other faith traditions (read: races). Relatedly, those denominational affiliations also provide a major recruiting ground for Christian institutions, so colleges affiliated with traditionally White faith traditions already face an uphill battle in recruiting students of other races. Also, at many of these institutions (including mine) full-time faculty have to sign a statement of faith and/or attend a specific denominational church. As in the case of Calvin College, that means that professional and academic qualifications alone do not suffice to make one eligible to teach at Christian institution. The lack of diversity among full-time faculty is a major impediment to the diversification of the student body.
2. Second, despite being a good thing, the article suffers from a major weakness. As I pointed out in my post on Facial Diversity, too often in American discussions of race focus exclusively (or nearly so) on the Black population. This comes through in the current article in two ways. (a) Most obviously, the article focuses exclusively on the (commendable) increase of Black students on Christian campuses. Other minorities are mentioned only as an after-thought, as in the following quote from Paul R. Corts, president of the CCCU:

   Seeing that there are more black students enrolled is only part of the picture because one of the reasons you get more black students is because you’ve been making your campus more welcoming to blacks and other minorities as well.

   
   ". . . and other minorities as well." While I'm sure this is unintentional, as a member of a non-Black minority group, I can't help but read this as a marginalizing of non-Blacks as quasi-non-minorities (but still also non-White/non-majority). While Black and White is more racially diverse than just White, it still misses out on a lot (even most) of the potential diversity that the Church (and all its affiliated institutions) should be pursuing. (b) More subtly, the article nowhere addresses the responsibilities of the Black community to participate in the effort to diversify Christian (and other) campuses. The phenomenal increases in enrollment of Black students reported in the article are not simply the result of the efforts of predominantly White Christian colleges to attract a broader mix of students. Those colleges have had to develop relationships with other organizations, not least traditionally Black faith traditions and churches, colleges and social organizations, which themselves have had to participate in the efforts to encourage Black students to matriculate into those colleges. In other words, I think the credit for the good things going on among CCCU's member institutions ought to be more broadly spread.
3. Third, my own institution, as I've already said, still has a lot of work to do to diversify our student body, our faculty, and our staff and administration. That said, we already have a surprisingly diverse campus community, if race is not allowed to be the sole criterion of diversity. And while we do still have our work cut out for us, we also need to be up front that there are some aspects of diversity that our campus outright rejects. As the most obvious example, we will always be a Christian college, so religious diversity, beyond the boundaries of Christian praxis and theology, will never be welcomed here. That's not to say that Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and atheist individuals, etc. will be driven off campus by angry students with pitchforks and torches. But those individuals will never be integrated into our identity as an institution.

I hope that the trends identified in the IHE piece continue in up-coming years; even more to the point, I hope these trends are already more broadly applicable and continue to be so in the future. My dream of a more diverse Church (in all its related institutions) jives with the politically correct emphasis on diversity, but it is not motivated by political correctness. Rather, I have in view the vision of John the Elder, who was granted a glimpse into heaven and was surprised by the gathering from every nation, tribe, and tongue to worship the Creator of the universe. Making our colleges and universities more accurately reflect the racial make-up of the country (or even the world) isn't a bad idea; a better one is to bring our institutions into conformity with the racial make-up of heaven.

Facial diversity

Inside Higher Ed. reports on a study by a sociologist at Augsburg College on the discrepancy between the image of [racial] diversity portrayed in the recruiting materials of many institutions of higher education, on the one hand, and the actual diversity of the student body. The problem is, obviously, real, but the article does a commendable job of avoiding the easy criticism of these institutions as "hypocritical" or "deceitful." While colleges and universities need to be held accountable when the appearance of diversity suffices in the presence of a lack of any substantive diversity, the portrayal of a diverse campus can legitimately function as an expression of an administration's hopes and plans and may even encourage bringing about the reality the promotional pieces manufactured.

But the article hints at another problem, one I first encountered when working at a church in Uptown Cincinnati that legitimately (and somewhat successfully) strove to diversify its worshipping body as well as its ministerial staff. The problem is well-stated by Timothy Pippert, the sociologist behind the study.

Black equals diversity for many people. If you show African American students, people think that means your institution is diverse. [my emphasis]

Given the torrid (but not completely so) history of race relations in this country, this perception is understandable. But let's be clear: An absence of Black persons does not equal homogeneity, and vice versa. On my own campus I can think off the top of my head of only two current students, both of whom are biracial, who self-identify as African American and one recent graduate who is currently enrolled in one of our Masters programs who is Black. We also have (at least) one international Black student (though he is not African; the use of "African American" as a euphemism for "Black" runs into trouble precisely in the cases of non-Black African[-American]s and non-African Blacks). And while my institution has some way to go toward becoming a legitimately diverse campus (and knows it has its work cut out for it), our campus is more diverse than a simple count of Black (or even darker) faces would suggest.

My father is, to put it nebulously, a professional in the area of diversification and diversity-training. And though I would never claim to speak for him or on his behalf, he has said on numerous occasions something that we would all do well to remember: "Diversity means difference: young or old, American or international, male or female, Black, Caucasian, Latino/a, Asian (and so on)," all these things go some way toward promoting and expressing diversity. None of this excuses campuses that are content to operate without regard for racial minorities, but hopefully it does remind us that efforts toward diversification have be more than skin-deep.