Great piece in today's NYTimes on the Abigail Fisher, Affirmative Action case out of the University of Texas at Austin. Summative quote:
Imagine how much students might be getting wrong, how much they are conforming to comfortable ideas and ultimately how much they could be underperforming because of this.
Ethnic diversity is like fresh air: It benefits everybody who experiences it. By disrupting conformity it produces a public good. To step back from the goal of diverse classrooms would deprive all students, regardless of their racial or ethnic background, of the opportunity to benefit from the improved cognitive performance that diversity promotes.
Research by Evan P. Apfelbaum and colleagues (2014) is brought to bear on the question of the importance of diversity in a market context with direct implications for higher education.
One can't help but wonder what influence the student movement nationwide that largely is calling for greater diversity in higher education will have (learn about their demands here), if any, on the court's decision today. One would think that even if not directly addressed by the SCOTUS, the unfolding backstage story will nevertheless give them some pause.
Angela Valenzuela
c/s
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributors
Diversity Makes You Brighter
AFFIRMATIVE
ACTION is back before the Supreme Court today. The court has agreed to
hear, for the second time, the case of Abigail Fisher, a white applicant
who claims that she was rejected by the University of Texas at Austin
because of her race. Ms. Fisher invokes the promise of equal protection
contained in the 14th Amendment, reminding us that judging people by
their ancestry, rather than by their merits, risks demeaning their
dignity.
Upholding
affirmative action in 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor argued that it served the intellectual purpose of a
university. Writing for the majority, she described how the University
of Michigan aspired to enhance diversity not only to improve the
prospects of certain groups of students, but also to enrich everyone’s
education.
Ms.
Fisher argues that diversity may be achieved in other ways, without
considering race. Before resorting to the use of race or ethnicity in
admissions, the University of Texas
must offer “actual evidence, rather than overbroad generalizations
about the value of favored or disfavored groups” to show that “the
alleged interest was substantial enough to justify the use of race.”
Our
research provides such evidence. Diversity improves the way people
think. By disrupting conformity, racial and ethnic diversity prompts
people to scrutinize facts, think more deeply and develop their own
opinions. Our findings show that such diversity actually benefits
everyone, minorities and majority alike.
To study the effects of ethnic and racial diversity, we conducted a series of experiments
in which participants competed in groups to find accurate answers to
problems. In a situation much like a classroom, we started by presenting
each participant individually with information and a task: to calculate
accurate prices for simulated stocks. First, we collected individual
answers, and then (to see how committed participants were to their
answers), we let them buy and sell those stocks to the others, using
real money. Participants got to keep any profit they made.
When
trading, participants could observe the behavior of their counterparts
and decide what to make of it. Think of yourself in similar situations:
Interacting with others can bring new ideas into view, but it can also
cause you to adopt popular but wrong ones.
It
depends how deeply you contemplate what you observe. So if you think
that something is worth $100, but others are bidding $120 for it, you
may defer to their judgment and up the ante (perhaps contributing to a
price bubble) or you might dismiss them and stand your ground.
We
assigned each participant to a group that was either homogeneous or
diverse (meaning that it included at least one participant of another
ethnicity or race). To ascertain that we were measuring the effects of
diversity, not culture or history, we examined a variety of ethnic and
racial groups. In Texas, we included the expected mix of whites, Latinos
and African-Americans. In Singapore, we studied people who were
Chinese, Indian and Malay. (The results were published with our
co-authors, Evan P. Apfelbaum, Mark Bernard, Valerie L. Bartelt and
Edward J. Zajac.)
The
findings were striking. When participants were in diverse company,
their answers were 58 percent more accurate. The prices they chose were
much closer to the true values of the stocks. As they spent time
interacting in diverse groups, their performance improved.
In
homogeneous groups, whether in the United States or in Asia, the
opposite happened. When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or
race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong
direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in
others’ answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups,
across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to
distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought
cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.
For
our study, we intentionally chose a situation that required analytical
thinking, seemingly unaffected by ethnicity or race. We wanted to
understand whether the benefits of diversity stem, as the common
thinking has it, from some special perspectives or skills of minorities.
What
we actually found is that these benefits can arise merely from the very
presence of minorities. In the initial responses, which were made
before participants interacted, there were no statistically significant
differences between participants in the homogeneous or diverse groups.
Minority members did not bring some special knowledge.
The
differences emerged only when participants began interacting with one
another. When surrounded by people “like ourselves,” we are easily
influenced, more likely to fall for wrong ideas. Diversity prompts
better, critical thinking. It contributes to error detection. It keeps
us from drifting toward miscalculation.
Our
findings suggest that racial and ethnic diversity matter for learning,
the core purpose of a university. Increasing diversity is not only a way
to let the historically disadvantaged into college, but also to promote
sharper thinking for everyone.
When
it comes to diversity in the lecture halls themselves, universities can
do much better. A commendable internal study by the University of Texas
at Austin showed zero or just one African-American student in 90
percent of its typical undergraduate classrooms. Imagine how much
students might be getting wrong, how much they are conforming to
comfortable ideas and ultimately how much they could be underperforming
because of this.
Ethnic
diversity is like fresh air: It benefits everybody who experiences it.
By disrupting conformity it produces a public good. To step back from
the goal of diverse classrooms would deprive all students, regardless of
their racial or ethnic background, of the opportunity to benefit from
the improved cognitive performance that diversity promotes.
Sheen S. Levine is a
professor at the Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas
at Dallas; David Stark is a professor of sociology at Columbia.
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