News & Features Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
Diversity’s Peter Wood wants Sandra Day O’Connor to read his book
BY SETH GITELL

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2002 -- The unassuming and scholarly Peter Wood is about to find himself in the middle of a maelstrom.

Wood, a professor of anthropology at Boston University and former aide to John Westling (who resigned in July of 2002), is the author of Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (Encounter Books). The book provides an intellectual history of "diversity" as a concept and argues that it should be retired as a motivating factor of social life in America — and as a justification for affirmative action. The relevance of all this is that sometime during its next session, the United States Supreme Court will hear the case of Grutter v. Bollinger, a case that could prompt the high court for the first time to expand on or overturn educational affirmative action programs put into place after the last time the court heard the issue in 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

Wood’s book is slowly picking up steam. He gave a reading at the Barnes & Noble at Boston University last week that was televised by C-SPAN. When I visited him recently at his office in BU, Wood wanted to make clear that he was not seeking to impose a homogeneous society. Rather, he believes that enforced diversity for the purpose of rationalizing affirmative action programs is wrong.

"What I say is that the great variety and diversity you see on BU’s campus is a good kind of diversity," he says. "But that’s not what diversity means to a lot of people, including many in academia." As examples of "good diversity" Wood invokes the hurly-burly maritime culture of New Bedford in the 19th Century, which included Portuguese, Cape Verdean, French Canadian, South Sea islanders, and Irish sailors; the US military; and modern Chelsea, Massachusetts. Where diversity becomes pernicious, Wood argues, is when it is "artificial." "That’s when you expect people to live up or live down to stereotypes," he says. "That belittles what we are as human beings."

The most interesting part of Wood’s book is his suggestion that diversity joined the pantheon of American values along with liberty and freedom only recently -- since the 1978 Bakke opinion. In that case, which asked whether Allan Bakke, an unsuccessful medical school applicant to University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, was rightly rejected while African Americans and other minorities with lower test scores were admitted. The court was closely divided. Four justices held that the Supreme Court should uphold the decision of California’s highest court, which was to let Bakke in. Four others held that the University of California system should be upheld based on broad constitutional grounds that attempt to foster equality between citizens of all races, namely the 14th Amendment. Only one justice, Lewis Powell, believed that the University of California program was justified by diversity. And, according to Wood, Powell came up with the idea on the basis of not some intellectual treatise, but from an excerpt for the September 26, 1977 edition of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, which referred to "learning through diversity" and a Harvard admissions brochure. "Because his vote was the swing vote, his opinion was the lead opinion," says Wood, noting an entire diversity industry sprang forward from there.

For some conservatives, Wood, who is relatively low-key and supports affirmative action for some jobs where race consciousness is important, such as police work, national security, and intelligence agents, is too kind to diversity. The conservative Weekly Standard faulted Wood for being too "generous" to the concept and taking it too seriously. ("I’m not that kind of person," retorts Wood. "I take the idea seriously as an idea.") Still, he views the stakes of the upcoming Supreme Court hearing as high. "I’d like Sandra Day O’Connor [who replaced Powell on the court and will likely be the deciding vote this time] to read this book," he says. "She’ll learn diversity is not as sound an idea as many people think."

While I’m more sympathetic to diversity as a justification for affirmative action than Wood, I think it would have been better for the Supreme Court to make the case for it on more sound constitutional grounds than what Powell provided. The argument, for example, that such programs are necessary to redress historical grievances is an important one. Nonetheless, Wood provides an interesting new aspect to this debate.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com.

Issue Date: February 13, 2003
"Today's Jolt" archives: 2003  2002  2001

Back to the News and Features table of contents.
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group