Today, UMN President Kaler, during a campus town hall, said, I think we have other issues that are more urgent than the racial diversity of this campus. Here are my thoughts. First, I think its important to assume good intentions and to figure that, as an administrator who speaks publicly so often, hed likely say that he misspoke. I think the more important thing to reflect upon with this quote isnt even so much racial diversity (which IS a gigantic problem at this and many universities) but the fact that putting the myriad of issues a university faces into artificial tiers of importance is a damaging construct, and certainly one that I dont believe administrators wish to encourage. Particularly, many of the universitys smaller, short-term goals can likely be categorized as more urgent than its grander, long-term goals. But we dont discuss things this way. To say that there are more urgent issues than something is a non-statement, an annoying bit of truthiness. Though not an untruth, its a harmful and distracting thing to say. Some of our issues are more important. Some of our issues are more important. But we must not fuel competition between this issue or that issue. We must be prepared to holistically consider all challenges we face. And one of those challenges is the notion our university must so limit itself.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 20:23:17 +0000
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