Diversity's Promise for Higher Education: Making It Work

by Daryl G. Smith

Overview

Building sustainable diversity in higher education isn't just the right thing to do—it is an imperative for institutional excellence and for a pluralistic society that works.

In Diversity's Promise for Higher Education, author Daryl G. Smith proposes clear and realistic practices to help institutions identify diversity as a strategic imperative for excellence and pursue diversity efforts that are inclusive of the varied issues on campuses—without losing focus on the critical unfinished business of the past.

To become more relevant while remaining true to their core missions, colleges and universities must continue to frame diversity as central to institutional excellence. Smith suggests that seeing diversity as an imperative for an institution's mission, and not just as a value, is the necessary lever for real institutional change. Furthermore, achieving excellence in a diverse society requires increasing institutional capacity for diversity—working to understand how diversity is tied to better leadership, positive change, research in virtually every field, student success, accountability, and more equitable hiring practices.

In this edition, Smith emphasizes a transdisciplinary approach to the topic of diversity. Drawing on fifty years of diversity studies, this fourth edition engages with how the environment has transformed for diversity work since the third edition appeared in 2020. It
• addresses the changed landscape in which DEI work has been politicized both on and off campus;
• provides examples and language to suggest ways to articulate the centrality of diversity to mission and excellence;
• emphasizes the link between healthy democracies and higher education's mission in light of the current global and domestic challenges to democracy;
• highlights the need to focus on the conditions for developing healthy communities where dialogue, difference, and learning can take place;
• examines the current climate of campus protests and the implications for free speech and academic freedom; and
• reemphasizes the complexity of identity—and explains how to attend to the growing kinds of identities relevant to diversity, equity, and inclusion while not overshadowing the unfinished business of race, class, and gender.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421449241
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Edition description:	fourth edition
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.07(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Daryl G. Smith is a professor of education and psychology at Claremont Graduate University and author or coauthor of a number of books and articles, including Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking the Myths; Making a Real Difference with Diversity: A Guide to Institutional Change; Assessing Diversity on College and University Campuses; The Challenge of Diversity: Involvement or Alienation in the Academy?; and A Diversity Research Agenda: What More Do We Need to Know?

Table of Contents

Preface: The Promise of Diversity Is Excellence
Acknowledgments
Part I: The Diversity Imperative
1. The National and Global Context for Diversity in Higher Education
2. The Role of Identity in Diversity
Part II: Reframing Diversity
3. A Diversity Framework for Higher Education: An Imperative for Excellence
4. The Past Fifty Years
Part III: Building Capacity by Interrupting the Usual
5. Identifying and Retaining Talent
6. Working with and across Differences: Intergroup Relations, Identity, and Healthy Communities
7. Student Learning and Success
Part IV: What Will It Take?
8. Monitoring Institutional Progress on Diversity
9. Making Diversity Work: Recommendations and Conclusions
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Yolanda T. Moses

This book frames a comprehensive approach to diversity that shifts the emphasis from individuals to institutions. The author pushes us past our assumptions and safe ways of seeing difference and inclusion. It is tantamount to a paradigm shift for the entire diversity field. It is a most significant piece of work for this century.

— Yolanda T. Moses, University of California, Riverside

From the Publisher

Daryl Smith reminds us in this update of her seminal work on Diversity's Promise that diversity, equity, and inclusion work, does not diminish, but contributes to excellence, and to a healthy democracy.
—Paulette Granberry Russell, National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education

With this crucial update, Smith gives us something higher ed leaders and rank-and-file faculty urgently need: a fresh and irrefutable narrative not just in diversity's defense, but one that outflanks the offense.
—Kiernan Mathews, Ivy+ Faculty Advancement Network

With increasing calls for campuses to maintain 'neutrality' and polarization regarding issues of diversity, Daryl G. Smith reminds us of the imperative to create campus environments that serve all our students. Years of 'diversity initiatives' have hardly moved the needle towards more pluralistic campus environments. An excellent resource for helping us center our practice in pluralism.
—Susan Borrego, CSU Stanislaus

This new edition of a seminal text is a gift to diversity scholars and practitioners. In an evolving national and global context, when the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion are being questioned, the author's research offers timely insights into diversity and excellence and the conditions that enable the greatest potential for their transformative impact in higher education.
—Taffye Benson Clayton, Auburn University

Editorial Reviews

The book is a must-read for anyone working in higher education but more specifically for individuals who are in formal leadership positions at institutions where diversity goals and values are often challenged, where strategic plans and strategies are developed and implemented, and where accountability, climate, and equity are monitored for meaningful structural change. This book offers a deep, broad, and forward-looking approach to making Diversity's Promise for Higher Education a closer, rather than a distant reality.
—Review of Higher Education

From the Publisher

An important contribution for its succinct and persuasive framing of diversity as more than an afterthought but as an essential and primary lens through which to view our institutional work education . . . This text unequivocally and strategically frames the implementation of our contemporary diversity imperative.

Journal of College Student Development

A groundbreaking text that highlights diversity's crucial role as a driving force for change in higher education.

Teaching Theology and Religion

This book provides guidance for advisors interested in developing a stronger understanding of diversity related topics and provides the stimulus for meaningful discussions about methods that enhance the institutional climate for multiple student groups.

NACADA Journal

A must-read for anyone working in higher education . . . This book offers a deep, broad, and forward-looking approach to making Diversity's Promise for Higher Education a closer, rather than a distant reality.

Review of Higher Education

Daryl Smith . . . has updated her landmark work on the importance and value of diversity in higher education leadership, research, student success, and other aspects of higher education . . . Smith offers concrete suggestions for colleges and universities to improve diversity on campus.

Council of Independent Colleges Newsletter

A valuable resource in offering a multifaceted approach for colleges and universities to follow in seeking to make diversity efforts constitute a core part of institutional functioning . . . Smith offers a very useful work that is accessible to a more general audience, including higher education administrators, as well as of value to scholars specializing in diversity issues.

Teachers College Record

"This book provides guidance for advisors interested in developing a stronger understanding of diversity related topics and provides the stimulus for meaningful discussions about methods that enhance the institutional climate for multiple student groups."

NACADA

Each generation is becoming more diverse than the previous, that being said, even you that teach in rural or suburban communities will benefit from this book.

Kick Ass Book Reviews

A must-read for anyone working in higher education... This book offers a deep, broad, and forward-looking approach to making Diversity's Promise for Higher Education a closer, rather than a distant reality.

Review of Higher Education - Christine A. Stanley

This book provides guidance for advisors interested in developing a stronger understanding of diversity related topics and provides the stimulus for meaningful discussions about methods that enhance the institutional climate for multiple student groups.

NACADA Journal - Adrian H. Huerta

A valuable resource in offering a multifaceted approach for colleges and universities to follow in seeking to make diversity efforts constitute a core part of institutional functioning... Smith offers a very useful work that is accessible to a more general audience, including higher education administrators, as well as of value to scholars specializing in diversity issues.

Teachers College Record - Neal Hutchens

An important contribution for its succinct and persuasive framing of diversity as more than an afterthought but as an essential and primary lens through which to view our institutional work education... This text unequivocally and strategically frames the implementation of our contemporary diversity imperative.

Journal of College Student Development - Ryan P. Barone & Sue A. Saunders