Just How Much Diversity Will the Law Permit?

• In Event: 33.079 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 33.079-8 - Compassion as We Diversify Higher Education!?

Abstract

Stemming from the legal, political and moral obligations of the 1960s and 1970s civil rights movements, colleges and universities have increasingly used race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity under the umbrella terms of diversity and inclusion to address social inequality in institutional settings. While this work intends to disrupt the status quo of post-secondary life, diversity practices continue to be challenged in the courts. Even as diversity is an unstable concept, disability is still left out of this work. This study investigates how 23 participants including college presidents, administrators, faculty and staff from six college campuses understood disability as a form of diversity and how civil rights laws and affirmative action policies enabled or hindered their work.

Author

• Lauren Shallish, The College of New Jersey