Agent of Democracy - Society for College and University Planning

The Engaged University
Because Powell’s opinion was the law of the land after 1978,
and because there were good substantive reasons for it, many
colleges and universities began to see affirmative action (broadly
defined as any effort to encourage the participation of women and
minorities) as essential to their scholarly and educational missions.
Meanwhile, surveys found that young people increasingly saw
racial diversity as an asset. As Liu noted, “the twentysomething
generation is still key, as confused as we may be now. We are the
first American generation to have been born in an integrated society,
and we are accustomed to more race-mixing than any generation
before us.” 28
If there is a common theme to the 13 articles on diversity in
the 1994 and 1995 HEX issues, it is the search for a positive vision.
Often, multiculturalism has a consumerist feel. One assumes that
there is a finite supply of cultural goods, each marked with a gender
and ethnic tag; the question is how much of students’ finite time
should be spent consuming “Western” products, versus works of
their own choice, versus assigned works by previously excluded
groups. I see the early HEX authors as struggling for a positive,
“win-win” vision in which new generations can not merely consume
but also create works that expand the cultural commons, either by
combining multiple cultural influences (see John Lahr’s review of
Anna Deveare Smith in the inaugural HEX), or by creating cultural
groups on campus that give students a sense that they “matter” (as
Daryl G. Smith argued), or by adding “new voices along with the
old” (as Cortés recommended).
When students are encouraged to create culturally diverse
products and contribute them to the commons, they join a tradition
of democratic activism that connects politics closely to culture and
sees citizens as creators. As Harry Boyte shows in this volume, cultural
politics was the tradition of Hull House in the 1890s, the
Popular Front in the 1930s, and the Freedom Movement in the 1960s.
It remains essential in some contemporary community organizing
work, especially that of the Industrial Areas Foundation and the
28 Liu, “Shredding the Race Card,” 22.
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