On Mar. 27, the Main Campus Executive Faculty will consider a proposal to include an “Engaging Difference” requirement in the undergraduate core curricula. The Last Campaign for Academic Reform and the Provost’s Committee for Diversity began circulating an online petition for the proposal on Feb. 22, after the reaction to a Voice cartoon highlighted the critical need for greater diversity awareness among students. They propose that beginning next fall semester, all undergraduates must take two “Diversity, Power, and Privilege” courses that will also count as a general education or major class.
The proposal is neither new nor groundbreaking. In fact, since 1991, students have been organizing, without success, to pressure the university to require a diversity component in its core curricula. The last time the campus debated a similar proposal in 2010, several professors, including School of Foreign Service Dean James Reardon-Anderson, were vocal in their opposition, and the proposal never came to fruition. “I do not think the curriculum should include any required course designed to convey or promote any particular social value,” Reardon-Anderson told the Voice at the time.
But a Georgetown education does promote certain social values. MCEF should recognize the pressing relevance of a diversity requirement to a Georgetown education in the 21st century. The university’s impressive track record of placing alumni in global business, public service, and Congress shows that it holds the responsibility of educating the world’s next generation of leaders. Yet many students graduate without ever having to engage with issues of diversity. Unless students wish to independently prioritize confronting power and privilege in the classroom over business and international relations, Georgetown’s future leaders will be far from ready to serve the country or the world when they graduate.
Implementing the requirement will hardly be a complex task. LCAR and the Provost’s Committee have already identified 80 or so courses that address race, class, sexual identity, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and disability/ability and satisfy their proposal’s criteria. To ratify a diversity requirement is to merely codify what many students already do: expanding their horizons in the true spirit of a liberal arts education.
Proponents of the proposal, however, must remember to focus on quality, not on quantity. A lecture that tangentially mentions African-American history or a professor indoctrinating students with their personal beliefs on gender norms for a semester does not enrich engagement about the challenges of diversity. Lecturing, theorizing, and reading alone will not fulfill the intentions behind the mandated diversity requirement. Professors should break down barriers of comfort and complacency and force students into honest, open dialogue.
After almost 25 years of discussions, MCEF must seize the opportunity to bring Georgetown one small but significant step closer to its ideal of “educating the whole person.” Between now and the MCEF’s vote, faculty and students should reconsider the meaning of liberal arts education at Georgetown and the immense value a diversity requirement will bring to this campus.
