National Initiative on American Commitments:
Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning

"Contemporary debates about diversity are part of Americans' ongoing negotiations
over the meaning and application of our democratic principles."

Frank Wong, The Drama of Diversity and Democracy, AAC&U, 1995

The Association of American Colleges and Universities has created the ambitious, multi-project initiative on American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning, to address fundamental questions about higher education in a diverse democracy and to provide resources for colleges and universities willing to engage those questions as dimensions of institutional mission, campus climate and curricular focus. The American Commitments National Panel has framed four recommendations about addressing diversity in the college curriculum

American Commitments publishes policy papers and resources, supports faculty study and institutional planning and, through institutes such as Boundaries and Borderlands: The Search for Recognition and Community in America, provides materials for curriculum development and classroom teaching. With over 200 institutions directly involved in one or more of five separate American Commitments projects, AAC&U has created a national community of institutions and educators who are making diversity an integral part of educational excellence and public service.

What distinguishes AAC&U's leadership on diversity is our conviction that democracy cannnot fulfill its aspirations without acknowledging diversity and that diversity finds a moral compass in democratic values and principles. Diversity does not result in the fragmentation of people participating equitably in a democracy. Higher education, we believe, can nurture Americans' commitment and capacity to create a society in which democratic aspirations become democratic justice and diversity proves a means of forging a deeper unity.

Questions and Answers About the American Commitments Initiative

More Information: Additional Resources and Ways to Become Involved

Goals: Helping Higher Education Respond to Diversity
The American Commitments Projects
Questions and Answers About the Project
Results: Changes in the Curriculum and in Student Learning
For More Information: Additional Resources and Ways to Become Involved

Goals: Helping Higher Education Respond to Diversity
The American Commitments initiative juxtaposes the egalitarian creeds and aspirations of democracy with the persistent and structural inequalities experienced by people of color and other marginalized groups in the United States. Against this background the initiative emphasizes the need for greater justice and new forms of intercultural community throughout all of United States society, while pressing educators to foster, through their public leadership, their concern for campus life, and by the way they actively care about college learning, the human capacities needed to build and sustain an egalitarian, multicultural democracy.

How does American Commitments define "diversity"?
American Commitments defines "diversity" broadly. It addresses not only race and gender but the intersections of these and other sources of human identity such as religion, ethnicity, age, sexual preference, class and ability. By linking diversity with democracy, AAC&U argues that diversity is a civic issue, not special pleading for particular interests or a recipe for Balkanization. As a civic issue, diversity calls for reengagement with democratic aspirations, principles and possibilities and for recognition of the asymmetries of acknowledgment, opportunity, and justice that are woven in our nation's past and current histories.

What view of American democracy guides this work?
As Benjamin Barber says, "The leading dilemma of our time is whether the need to honor and acknowledge diversity can be reconciled with the need to create a common civic fabric with which Americans can identify." American Commitments addresses societal diversity as a means, not an end. Its goals are the dignity of full recognition for all peoples and more just relationships among us. In exploring American pluralism, the initiative has become a creative catalyst, challenging educators and learners to develop ways to live together productively in communities that value difference. Tolerance, once considered a signal social virtue, is insufficient. Society needs communities collaborating to build more just, resp onsive and inclusive forms of what Dewey has called "associated living."

The following questions about the intersection of diversity and democracy guided the various AAC&U American Commitments activities:

• What must we know and understand about the multiplicity of groupsand people that have been unequally acknowledged in our nation?
• What democratic concepts can we draw on from our own U.S. history to guide us in forging new civic covenants among our people?
• How are we to understand the contradictory interconnections between democratic aspiration and structural injustice?
• What kinds of intercultural competencies will graduates need to negotiate their disparate and multiple commitments and communities, inherited and self-chosen?
• What kinds of knowledge and capabilities are required for full participation in a pluralist democracy? What kinds of values?
• What are the crucial distinctions between recognizing/acknowledging difference and learning to take grounded stands in the face of difference? If both are goals for liberal learning, how can students develop both kinds of capabilities over time?

AAC&U's mission is to advance high quality liberal education.
How does American Commitments serve this mission?

Liberal education helps learners develop the cognitive skills, affective understanding and societal knowledge they need as individuals, citizens and members of the community. Learning about American democratic and cultural pluralism contributes to all these goals:

• American pluralism is intrinsically complex and challenging, enlightening and rewarding. Studying it helps both learners and educators develop skills for analysis, thoughtful reflection and grounded decision-making;
• Society continually struggles with competing values and aspirations. Learning about diversity and democracy prepares citizens for engaged and responsible citizenship;
• Intellectual and experiential knowledge of societal diversity have become prerequisites for success in virtually every profession, as well as in daily life.

AAC&U also places high value on educating students for participation in the global community. The association views study of both United States diversity and world cultures as equally necessary and mutually reinforcing.

The American Commitments Projects/b>

I THE NATIONAL PANEL
The National Panel is a group of scholars and campus leaders who have made significant contributions to our current understandings of cultural and democratic pluralism in American society. Following two years of dialogue with all parts of higher education, the Panel has published a series of reports and policy recommendations on higher education's role in a diverse democracy and on pedagogical, curricular, and institutional practices. The American Commitments National Panel has framed four recommendations about addressing diversity in the college curriculum. This project is also supporting a series of Community Seminars that address issues of recognition and inclusion in all parts of American society.

II DIVERSITY LEADERSHIP INSTITUTES: THE INSTITUTION AS EDUCATOR
Working within a framework established by the National Panel, these leadership institutes on United States pluralism and campus planning are designed for teams of institutional leaders from both the faculty and the administration. They address diversity as a fundamental dimension of effective education and foster institution-specific campus planning and problem-solving.

III CURRICULUM & FACULTY DEVELOPMENT NETWORK
Launched in 1993, the Curriculum and Faculty Development Network links ninety-two institutions that are working to rethink the curriculum so there are ample opportunities for students to engage with complex, critical questions about American pluralism. In 1994 and 1995, the Network held a ten-day summer institute that introduced several hundred network faculty to new scholarship on democracy and diversity. The network also supports faculty development through national workshops, campus-based initiatives, and electronic networks.

IV DIVERSITY WORKS
In cooperation with the University of Maryland, AAC&U has launched DiversityWeb and Diversity Digest, an electronic hub and free quarterly newsletter intended to connect, amplify and multiply campus diversity efforts throughout postsecondary education. DiversityWeb includes a Leader's Guide to promising practices and resources, Institution Profiles, a Planning Manual from the University of Maryland, and online discussions in the DiversityWeb Work Rooms.

V RACIAL LEGACIES AND LEARNING: AN AMERICAN DIALOGUE
"How can higher education, with its local communities, prepare graduates to address the legacies of racism and the opportunities for racial reconciliation in the United States?" This question guides this project which brings together colleges, universities, and community organizations across the country to organize dialogues and seminars that address the legacies and challenges of race in our past, present and future. The initiative began with a national Campus Week of Dialogue on Race from April 6 to 9, 1998 and is culminating in a series of Campus-Community Seminars to be held on campuses in the fall of 1998 exploring new learning about racial legacies, challenges and possibilities in American society.

Questions and Answers About the Project

How many institutions are involved in American Commitments?
There are 127 colleges and universities directly involved in the ongoing work of the initiative. American Commitments is the largest single network in the Ford Foundation's Campus Diversity Initiative (CDI). Since its inception in 1990, CDI has supported 250 colleges and universities in institutional planning, faculty development and curricular renewal related to societal diversity. AAC&U has cooperated with other consortia in developing resources for all 250 institutions.

What resources does American Commitments provide?
The American Commitments National Panel has published three reports on higher education in a diverse democracy: The Drama of Diversity and Democracy; Liberal Learning and the Arts of Connection for a New Academy, and American Pluralism and the College Curriculum. The project also has released The Impact of Diversity on Students: A Preliminary Review of the Research Literature and a series of bibliographies keyed to campus and community audiences. Other reports are in preparation.

American Commitments also sponsors a continuing series of open institutes and conferences on curriculum and institutional change that have been attended by over 2,000 faculty members and academic administrators from some 400 institutions. Faculty refl ections about some of those conferences have been published in various issues of AAC&U's journal, Liberal Education, including Winter 1996 ("Diversity Matters") and Fall 1995 ("Boundaries and Borderlands"). Additional institutes will be held in 19 97-98.

Currently, project staff publish a quarterly newsletter, Diversity Digest, which reaches 10,000 campus leaders and faculty members. Digest reports on campus examples of institutional and curricular change and summarizes current research on the effects of diversity initiatives on student learning.

What did faculty teams working in the American Commitments initiative actually study?
American Commitments institutes and reading lists take a "both/and" approach to American pluralism, exploring both the distinctiveness and the intersections of diverse American traditions and communities. Initiative seminars and reading lists place special emphasis on the evolution of democratic aspirations and principles and the role played by marginalized groups - women, peoples of color, gays and lesbians - in expanding both the meaning and the application of democratic principles. American Commitments also challenges educators to reexamine fundamental assumptions about what counts as significant knowledge and about the cultural uses of learning.

For example, in both 1994 and 1995, the project sponsored ten-day summer institutes for faculty teams entitled Boundaries and Borderlands: The Search for Recognition and Community in America. At the 1995 institute, 200 faculty members met in small seminar groups to read extensively about and discuss the following topics such as: "The U.S. Democratic Experiment: Forging a Nation for Whom?" and "Race and Racialization: The Color of Democracy." Each of these seminars, like the initiative as a whole, explored its topic across multiple and intersecting perspectives. Seminars on race, for example, addressed the connections among race, class, gender and ethnicity in relation to one another and to democratic aspirations. AAC&U has published descriptions of the seminars and the recommended readings under the title Boundaries and Borderlands: The Search for Recognition and Community in America.

Results and Recommendations: Changes in the Curriculum and in Student Learning

What changes in the curriculum are emerging from this work?
Participants in the American Commitment initiative are working to revise general education programs to address issues of diversity in American history and society more comprehensively. Typically, new courses on American pluralism teach students about the diverse racial, cultural, social, and other identities that characterize American society. Usually comparative in structure, they incorporate sophisticated understanding of the multiple influences that affect both how one defines one's own identity and is defined by the larger society. Many explore the sources and results of bias and discrimination.

Faculty members in the project are also helping students explore what it would mean to create communities that respect distinctive traditions while also creating new forms of inclusion, equality, and connection. Many of the new courses place strong emphasis on experiential as well as analytical learning. Some incorporate service learning. In general, these new courses challenge students to think in more complex ways about history, culture, identity and power relationships.

New diversity courses also stress the skills students need to function in a diverse world--skills like intercultural communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, and complex problem-solving. In addition to teaching a more accurate version of America's complex history, they are helping students gain skills and insights for leadership and a sense of their own responsibility for the quality of American community and civic life.

For additional information on changes in the college curriculum, see: Diversity and the College Curriculum: A Briefing Paper on How Colleges and Universities Are Preparing Students for a Changing World
Diversity Digest (Winter, 1997)

General Education and U.S. Democratic Pluralism: An Overview of Effective Campus Policies and Practices (forthcoming)

Is there any research on the effects of diversity courses on student learning?
Early research findings, summarized in the American Commitments publication The Impact of Diversity on Students, indicate that diversity courses are creating positive learning outcomes for all students. Several recent studies suggest that these courses, along with other institutional efforts to address diversity in all areas of campus life, are "related to satisfaction, academic success and cognitive development for all students." Courses and programs that address issues of diversity are also powerful determinants "of student satisfaction and of commitments to racial understanding."

Who Benefits from Racial Diversity in Higher Education?
By Mitchell J. Chang, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Loyola Marymount University, and Alexander W. Astin, Director, Higher Education Research Institute, University of CaliforniaÏLos Angeles, notes that recent studies show "that racial diversity has a direct positive impact on the individual white student: The more diverse the student body,the greater the likelihood that the white student will socialize with someone of a different racial group or discuss racial issues."

The University of Michigan requires every student to take a course on race and ethnicity. A longitudinal study of first-year students showed that students who took courses dealing with racial and ethnic issues characterized these courses as the most compelling influence in developing their support for educational equity.

Alexander Astin's 1993 study of 24,000 students in What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited reported that students who take courses in women's studies, ethnic studies, and third world studies broaden their thinking. They are more aware of cultural differences, more satisfied with college, more committed to promoting racial understanding, less materialistic, and more supportive of social change.

The Courage to Question: Women's Studies and Student Learning, a study of the impact of women's studies courses on student learning, found that women's studies creates connections across student voice, empowerment, self-esteem, and critical thin king so that when students graduate, they want to improve things not only for themselves but also for other people. As in Astin's study, The Courage to Question suggests that women's studies courses lead students to see the world from a variety of viewpoints and to become more engaged in dialogue with people who are different from themselves.

The American Commitments National Panel has framed four recommendations about addressing diversity in the college curriculum. The recommendations emphasize complementary forms of learning (personal, societal, participatory, and dialogical) for fostering --through the curriculum-- effective citizenship in a diverse democracy. Panel members ask institutions to teach students, in every part of their educational experience, to live creatively with the multiplicity, ambiguity, and irreducible differences that are the defining conditions of the contemporary world.

For More Information: Additional Resources and Ways to Become Involved

Where can I find more information?
Consult AAC&U's Publications office to find the publications described above, as well as several reports on institutional change, including Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking the Myths and Diversity in Higher Education, A Work in Progress. To order any of these publications, please contact: AAC&U Publications Desk , 1818 R St., NW, Washington, DC 20009; tel: 202/387-3760; fax 202/265-9532.

How can I become involved?
AAC&U continues to sponsor open institutes and conferences on diversity, democracy and student learning. For information about forthcoming institutes, visit AAC&U's website.