I saw two recent legal decisions that made me think.
The first was a simple criminal case where the prosecution had fingerprints implicating the defendant. The defense argued that fingerprints weren’t valid because there really haven’t been any studies that proved that fingerprints were unique; we’d just always assumed that they were. The judge agreed.
The second was a case regarding entrance into law school and the classic “reverse” discrimination cases where white students are passed over for “students of color” in order to achieve diversity. The belief is, of course, that a diverse student body is better.
So my question is: Prove it. Are there any studies that prove that a diverse student body is better then one that isn’t? How would people at some women’s colleges or “traditionally African American” colleges respond?
Being able to cope in a culturally-diverse environment is fast becoming a positive survival trait, what with the whole global village thing. In a society determined to isolate itself from outside influence, diversity may not be positively useful, but such a society puts itself at a disadvantage in very many ways.
Diversity is stimulating in many ways; mixtures of jellybeans are always more popular than single-flavour packets, even though most people probably eat them one at a time, ice cream stores that offer a choice of 42 flavours are likely to sell more than a store that only offers vanilla, even though most people will not order a cone loaded with a scoop of every flavour, clothing shops that offer a wide range of styles and colours will do better business than a shop that only sells green shirts, even if some customers only want a green shirt.
In a situation where there is no clearly defined ‘right’ or ‘best’, it makes sense to start with as diverse a set of options as possible, it’s easier to do this and discard some of them (or PC ‘de-emphasise’) than it would be to start with only one (possibly unsuitable) option and attempt to pull a suitable one out of thin air.
First of all, going to a segregated (in any way) school doesn’t prepare a student for the real world.
Second, education is supposed to broaden a person’s horizons, I’ve met people who went to religious boarding schools and they were incredibly socially awkward and not very “culturally literate”.
Third is what I call cultural triangulation- if there are a limited number of “great thinkers”, society as a whole is better off if they come from a variety of backgrounds and see things in different ways- it helps to eliminate blind spots. I didn’t explain that very well.
Well I suppose it’ll likely be a bad thing if you’re the first ‘diversee’ in a huge group of ‘non-diversees’.
Sorry, I’ve reading the Bt/jargon thread.
<<In fact, I’m struggling to think of a situation where diversity would be bad… anyone?>>
As an aside, I dislike the use of the word “diversity” to mean merely diversity of race, sex, and sexual orientation. I would love to see real diversity of political opinion in college humanities departments.
Back to the question. Many women feel that they are better off at women’s colleges. My wife got a fine education at one.
The success of Black colleges shows that they are also very worthwhile.
You wouldn’t have a link to that court case, would you? I was under the impression that the FBI maintained a database of nearly ten million fingerprints, and that law enforcement agencies can send in a print, and have a computer search for a match.
It is also my understanding that that database has been used to study the diversity of fingerprints. The conclusion was that not only were all fingerprints unique, but that no two fingerprints shared more than seven poins of cosanguinity though there are thousands of potential points.
All you need is seven (iirc) to make a legal identification.
The uniqueness of fingerprints, and their use as indentification seems to me to be one of the more well-documented and studied facts.
So, if you have a reference for a court case that says otherwise, I’d love to see it.
Mangetout, the military doesn’t exactly strive for intellectual integrity and difference. Since the footmen are only treated as chesspieces anyway, it makes no sense to have your pawn argue strategy with you.
Ummm. Quite the contrary really. The whole point of the chain of command is to allow initiative where it’s needed, and to create a flexible fighting force.
The reason things are divided up into squads, platoons, divisions, groups, etc. is so that there is a person responsible and charged with making tactical decisions at each and every level, from logistics, right on down to the individual infantry man.
Initiative and flexibility are very valuable leadership qualities, and the ability to think intelligently is a requisite survival trait on the battlefield.
Here are some cites on the fingerprint ruling, which occurred earlier this year and was issued by U.S. District Judge Louis Pollak. According to the third cite, he ended up reversing his own decision:
Scylla, I don’t beg to differ, but I do not feel you addressed my point. The military does not breed diversity, though it is flexible. The chain of command is such that one shouldn’t disobey an order from a commanding officer. Such obedience does not breed diversity.
A pawn does not need to be intelligent to checkmate a king, it only needs to be told where to go.
Well, I don’t want to make a major hijack of it, but I don’t see what the ability to follow orders has to do with diversity.
It would seem to me that in the military you would want all kinds of diversity, that it would be good.
The exception of course being disobediance.
Why is that a negative against diversity? I like all kinds of food, but I don’t like rotten food. When we’re talking about diversity we’re not talking about uncontrolled randomness necessarily are we?
Diversity is good in a stock portfolio, but you wouldn’t want to intentionally diversify into equities that were about to go bankrupt.
It seems to me that the concept of beneficial diversity has implied limits, for food, soldiers, stock, or whatever, but that that’s not a real argument against it, is it?
The question was whether diversity was ever not good. The answer is: yes. The military is one such example. I have no beef with diversity, but it only works where it works, and that is not in all affairs.
Not quite. I think you may be trying to wiggle where there’s no room.
You’re giving a specific example of negative desirability (i.e a disobediant soldier,) and from this trying to construe that diversity within the military is undesirable.
I point out that negativity isn’t generally what is meant with diversity, i.e eating rotten food would not be considered diversifying, nor would purchasing stocks about to go bankrupt be considered diversifying, nor would sending an ill-trained (disobedient) soldier into battle be considered diversifying.
I challenge the basic premise of your example. A disobediant soldier would not be an example of diversity, but rather an example of bad training, or a bad soldier.
A bad anything is undesirable. There’s nothing special about the military.
On the other hand, what you say in general may be taken for granted. While diversity is a generally a good thing, diversifying into only a lack of quality is inherently counterproductive in any endeavor.
Chile Rellenos
fried rice.
Hefeweissen
Guinness
Italian Wine
French Wine
California Wine
New Zealand Wine
Samuel Smith’s
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Sierra Nevada Porter
Anchor Steam
Pasta Carbonara
Fettucini Alfredo
Crawfish Etouffe
Lindt Chocolate
Chicken Fried Steak
Cheeseburgers
Corned beef
blintzes
cheesecake
torillas
Gyros
and on and on
Colleges discriminate of the basis to do well in school and pay thousands of dollars. We should eliminate these bigoted tendancies, to better prepare people for the Real World™.
Scylla, I see your objection, but I still feel that the military stifles diversity of opinion via the chain of command and order following. That is to say, the military is not a forum for dissent or opinion, and so does not allow the expression of dissent or opinion.
I agree that diversity for the sake of diversity is silly and not in the realm of the discussion. Perhaps I am not being contextual enough, but I fear that we will define diversity away, or at least make the word mean different things in different situations.
When I think of diversity, I think of freedom of religion, political parties, and so on. I do not consider criminals. Now, is there a way to consider the military diverse in such a manner? Or, if political alignment and religious opinion is an example of diversity in the broad conception of society, what would it mean in a specific construct within society? How would diversity manifest in the military?
If diversity is equated with the ability to choose and the responsibility to act on the choice, then there can be no counter-example to diversity: it is ubiquitous. Thus my concern of defining it away.
Yeah, but how many people are going to get out of college, see a black man and say “Oh my God! A black man! I don’t how to cope with this person, because my college didn’t have any black people in it!” It’s not like blacks are so different from whites that whites have to spend four years learning how to deal with them.
But there are clear “right” and “best”. Smart people are best.
-When trying to find matching socks.
-When buying tires (you wouldn’t put a tire on your car that’s a different size from the others just for the sake of “diversity”, would you?)
-Chorus lines
-Stunt doubles (you don’t want a guy to change shape from shot to shot)
-Protocols (if one computer is trying to use the telnet protocol, and another computer is expecting the gopher protocol, it’s not going to work)
In fact, eliminating diversity in consumer products was one of major parts of the industrial revolution.
Why not? Most people aren’t going to spend their lives in an environment that matches the ethnic make-up of their society. And most people aren’t going to choose a major that reflects the ethnic make-up of their school. So what are you going to do? Provide incentives to students to choose a major in which they are underrepresented?
In terms of studies, Richard Light at Harvard U. recently published a book based on a study of undergraduates at several universities that represented a fairly broad range of educational models – private, public, large, small, etc.
One of his results, although not the main point of the research, was that graduating students who “did well” (by the measurements of the college, for example, graduated in four years with a decent grade point average) cited “diversity of the student population” and “diversity of the faculty” as major contributing factors to their success at school. It should be noted that they were not prompted to answer “diversity” – it was an open ended question, and did not include a list of answers to select from.
I grant you that there are about a million variables here – the measurement of “doing well” is pretty vague, but at least we can take it to mean they didn’t spent 7 years on an undergraduate degree, nor did they flunk out of school. Also, we have no real measurement of how diverse, or diverse in what way, the student populations actually were. We’re probably talking about the perception of diversity here. But I think it supports what I hear anecdotally from students, that they consider diversity important, often important enough to factor into their college selection.