UH-OH. It’s Not Just the Bloggers.
[Letter to the Editor, Oregon Daily Emerald, University of Oregon Newspaper]:
As a University of Oregon alumnus, I read with some disquiet about the University’s Five Year Diversity Plan.
The most disturbing aspect of this plan is the purposefully undefined notion of “cultural competency.” John Shuford asserts that this vague concept was left so because it “would not be appropriate for the drafters of the blueprint to impose a definition because that might have led to adverse responses by some” (ODE, June 30, “Diversity plan sparks controversy with faculty”).
What? In other words, they didn’t define the governing idea of their plan because someone might not like their definition? This, at a large university, is the actual response of a salaried member of the administration? They didn't do something that needed to be done because somebody might not like them for doing it? Good God.
The authors of the diversity plan are going to govern a large part of University life based on an undefined concept, which they will get around to defining — if ever they do — at some equally undefined time down the road, if and when everyone promises not to get mad at them? No wonder the faculty is rebelling.
...If the people behind this plan — which for all I know may be a fine plan if done properly — cannot find sufficient steel in their spines to go out on a limb and define “cultural competency,” they have no business writing the plan in the first place.
Less and less, in society as well as in the University, are there people willing to take principled but intelligent stands on issues of importance. To do so requires careful thought, a mind willing to keep alive a little doubt in every certainty and, above all, the willingness to be wrong. If you don’t define “cultural competency,” you don’t ever have to risk being wrong about it. But if you are not willing to take such a risk, you need either to excise the concept from the plan, or turn it over to someone who is willing to take the risk.
Curt Hopkins 1991 Honors College graduate
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