Valuing Every Unique Background

In higher education over the past two centuries. He explores how the diversity principle—the belief that people with varied backgrounds, experiences, identities, and perspectives produce better outcomes by working together—first took root in the world’s first modern research university, founded in Germany in 1810. This principle inspired John Stuart Mill’s on Liberty, a cornerstone of academic freedom, and shaped Charles Eliot’s transformation of Harvard in the late nineteenth century to encourage the “clash of ideas.” It also underpinned the twentieth-century equality efforts of figures like Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Pauli Murray. By recounting the history of diversity through the lives and work of these and other influential thinkers, Oppenheimer makes a compelling case for embracing diversity as a central value in education and a vital ingredient for a vibrant intellectual and political culture. As contemporary backlash challenges diversity initiatives in government, business, and education, Oppenheimer—hailed by The New Yorker as America’s “diversity detective”—reminds us that understanding the rich, two-hundred-year history of this idea is more important than ever.

He is the author of “The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea."

https://www.amazon.com/Diversity-Principle-Story-Transformative-Idea/dp/0300279892

http://www.yourlotandparcel.org