any Americans grow up in homogeneous communities, where it is fairly rare to encounter a person of a different race, national origin, or ethnic background.  While this environment creates a “comfort zone,” in which the members of the community do not need to come to grips with “differentness” of their neighbors, the homogeneity limits the experiences of the people in the community.  They typically understand their own customs, values, attitudes, and even religion as essential and inevitable, because there is no exposure to other ways of thinking about and doing things.

             This situation may be viable as long as the individual stays in that community and as long as “others” do not migrate into the community.  Eventually, however, it is not unusual for the individual to leave the community--for example, to go away to college or to accept employment elsewhere—or for people of different backgrounds to migrate into the community.  At that point, the individual faces a choice of whether to adapt to the presence of others or whether to isolate himself with a feeling of regret that his environment is not the way it used to be and resentment that his environment has been “corrupted.”

             The decision to seethe over the presence of others deprives a person of an opportunity that has come along in his life:  This is the opportunity to expand the dimensions of one’s experiences, to learn about other cultures and ways of life, and to allow one to compare and contrast the way of life that he once considered inevitable with other approaches to thinking and living.  When one closes off this opportunity to learn and grow, he develops, in his mind, an “us-them” dichotomy.  The underlying assumption is that the “us” category is the superior category, and that the “them” category is doomed to inferiority.  As an example, an American citizen may categorize as stupid an immigrant whose command of the English language is shaky—not taking into account that the immigrant’s command of her own native language probably compares favorably to the American’s command of English and that the immigrant probably speaks more languages than the American, who—if he is a typical American—probably knows only one language.  In many similar ways, the person misjudges, based on his own limited perception of the facts, the characteristics of other kinds of people.

             It has become the policy of many institutions to embrace the notion of diversity and to attempt to make their workforces, student bodies, etc., diverse.  The rationale for encouraging diversity includes these ideas: 

· Diversity allows people to learn about the richness of the world’s cultures, ethnic identities, and value systems. 

· Diversity prepares people to supervise, work with, work for, do business with, teach, and serve a variety of people from various backgrounds. 

· Diversity prepares people to work cooperatively with people of various backgrounds who live in the same community and who, if the community is to develop in a productive and prosperous way, will need to understand and help each other. 

· When corporations, government agencies, and other institutions attempt to serve a diverse community with a workforce dominated by the traditional power-holders, these institutions often fail because of their misunderstanding of their customers and clients.  Those institutions become marginally irrelevant if they survive at all. 

· Diversity enhances the ability of Americans to understand their government’s policies in such matters as diplomacy, international trade, military policy, etc. 

· Diversity creates an atmosphere in which our appreciation of others’ values and beliefs allows us to refrain from imposing our own values and beliefs on them.  The attempt to accomplish this imposition is often costly and wasteful; in international terms, for example, it can be extremely costly in terms of the loss of goodwill. 

Let’s use North Georgia College & State University as a mini-case study.  NGCSU is committed to more diversity in its faculty and student body.  NGCSU is an equal-opportunity and affirmative-action employer, and is committed to giving complete and nondiscriminatory consideration to applicants of various backgrounds—including candidates from other countries—for faculty positions.

             NGCSU’s Students for Social Awareness organization has been active over the years in providing a place for discussion about the histories and experiences of Americans of different backgrounds.  Many black civil-rights leaders and other prominent African-Americans have been brought to the campus by the SSA.  In this manner, NGCSU students have had the opportunity to explore the perspectives of members of American minority groups.  The study of U. S. history is dreadfully incomplete if students are not given the chance to develop an understanding of the motivations of those in the majority who have orchestrated discrimination against members of minority groups as well as an understanding of the struggles waged by those who have demanded that they be free of such discrimination.  Encouraging our students to be in the presence of those who led the black civil-rights movement transforms the text of a chapter in a history book into a vivid encounter with those who have brought real social change into American life.

             Determined efforts to “internationalize” NGCSU are occurring.  Some members of the faculty are brought here on H-1B visas; some others are lawful permanent residents.  Through the University System of Georgia’s Global Partnership for International Recruiting, NGCSU seeks to attract students from other countries.  Rotary International places international students in U. S. colleges and universities; we anticipate that four students will enroll at NGCSU through the Rotary program during the fall semester of 2003.  The university’s Web site serves as a recruitment tool that has been effective in attracting the interest of, and enrollment by, students from other countries.  NGCSU’s competitive tuition and fees, which are publicized on the Web site, help to attract this interest; frequently, international students obtain a waiver of the more expensive out-of-state fees, another way in which NGCSU seeks to facilitate the enrollment of students from other countries.

             NGCSU’s International Student Association is a strong force for sharing the cultures of the university’s international students.  Each year, the ISA produces an international cultural show and presents an international festival featuring information, artifacts, and foods.  At the association’s regular meetings, members offer presentations about their countries, sometimes including slide shows.  Many professors encourage their students to attend these events because they provide experiences that go beyond the textbook and lecture formats of “learning about” rather than “learning with.” 

            The academic standards that our international students tend to set strengthen the overall academic and intellectual climate of our campus.  Despite the issues of “second language,” many international students graduate with academic honors:  One cannot ignore the intellectual feat of not only earning a college degree from an institution whose constituents speak the “second language,” but, furthermore, of outperforming most classmates for whom the institution’s language is native. 

            International students come to us not expecting to be treated differently than anyone else—-by professors or, for that matter, by classmates, either.  For example, an African student’s skin color may create an expectation in classmates that he will act in ways associated with black Americans.  The classmates’ behavior will confuse the African student who has not grown up in a black-American community, and his reaction is likely to confound the American students.  For another example, an Asian student majoring in English literature may find herself expected to perform brilliantly in mathematics classes, because of the stereotype that Asians are naturally adept at quantitative analysis; it may be some time before she comes to understand why such assumptions are being applied to her. 

            International students come to us with a very different way of understanding the world and their role in the world.  Academic institutions in their countries tend to be far more regimented and authoritarian.  Also, their standards of etiquette are markedly different from American standards.  For one example, their understanding of appropriate classroom behavior requires that they offer a level of formal respect that is unfamiliar to American students.   For another example, many of them have learned a different way of writing (they may have been taught that it is rude to write persuasive rhetoric that imposes their ideas on others and that it is preferable to write prose that is designed to build consensus). 

             Because our American students have this exposure to students from other cultures, they have access to intellectual pathways that would otherwise be closed to them.  Some of our American students have enrolled in study-abroad programs as a direct result of their exposure to international students, and the resulting erosion of their own insularity.  Research into sociology, psychology, political science, criminal justice, history, and other fields of inquiry is more informed, expansive, and productive when the student is aware of the scope of human characteristics, attitudes, behaviors, and experiences.  Instead of writing a survey question like, “How often do you read the Bible?”, the researcher-in-training is more apt to write, “How often do you read the spiritual texts of your religion?”  This enhancement of sophistication is more likely to lead to students who are successful in graduate school, in the business sector, and in the professions, which have been forced to come to terms with a world that is becoming smaller. 

            The presence of international students on a university campus expands the world for those students who will never have a passport.  Furthermore, a diverse presence of American citizens of various races and ethnic backgrounds enriches the educational experience tremendously.  At NGCSU, diversity has been recognized as a resource for every member of this community.  It can contribute to other institutions and communities in the same way.  Those who are receptive to this resource stand to gain the most from the new perspectives that will expand the boundaries of their experiences.

Last updated on July 28, 2004, by Barry D. Friedman.