What’s missing these days from discourse on issues of difference — “diversity”— is not just civility, but a vocabulary. Language traps meaning and marks territory. It demarcates ideology, values, and too definitively ascribes beliefs and behaviors. We must do better than that. 

Race, ethnicity, sex, disability, age and region are all markers used by pollsters, politicians and pundits to estimate who we are. But such markers hardly determine it. Such “visible diversity” is a form of stereotyping, which helps make the world predictable in broad strokes.

But the error rate is high. Better that we are known for our
“enacted diversity” — words and deeds, not just appearances.

So where are the safe places for holding such dialogues? Surely not the op-ed pages or blogs or talk radio, shrill-fests that promote digging in, hijacking language and hardening beliefs and the rhetoric for defending them. Examples: Equating affirmative action with “quotas,” or opportunity with “preferences” and “special treatment.”

Our differences have always been our strength. Now they divide, discourage and stifle the process that can lead to better ideas, more workable solutions and brighter futures. Consider the processes set in motion last January by Harvard President Lawrence Summers’ inarticulate observations on gender and science. Out of a set of ill-considered remarks to an invitation-only audience has come a renewed dialogue on research, power and the social trappings of difference.
No, this dialogue has not all been civil, respectful or enlightened. And it hasn’t all occurred on campus. But it has allowed probing questions to emerge and diverse perspectives to be engaged, even clarified. A bright line has been drawn connecting scholarship on nature-nurture to issues of merit, position and the disparity between women in the U.S. population and women on the science and engineering faculties of our greatest universities.