The Diversity Mandate
Emory University Provost Earl Lewis offers insight on the national climate for campus diversity.
Before becoming the first African-American provost at Emory University, Dr. Earl Lewis had been on the front lines of the University of Michigan’s defense of affirmative action in higher education. At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding the use of race in academic admissions, Lewis was serving as dean of Michigan’s Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and was vice provost for academic affairs/graduate studies.
Lewis, who went to UM in 1989 as an associate professor of history, arrived on the campus two years after then-president Dr. James J. Duderstadt implemented the Michigan Mandate, reportedly the most ambitious diversity initiative undertaken by a predominantly White research university. By the time Duderstadt stepped down as president in 1996, minority enrollment at UM had increased from 11 percent in 1986 to 25.4 percent.
By 1997, Lewis had ascended to the dean’s office, where he played a lead role in the affirmative action cases. He would remain in the dean’s office until moving on to Emory in 2004.
In early August, Lewis spoke to Diverse and shared his insights on the national climate for campus diversity.
Dr. Earl Lewis
POSITION: Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Emory University
EDUCATION: B.A., History and Psychology, Concordia College; M.A., American History, University of Minnesota; Ph.D., History, University of Minnesota
SELECTED BOOKS: In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in 20th Century, Norfolk (University of California Press, 1993), author; Defending Diversity: Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan,
(University of Michigan Press, 2004), co-author; To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 2000), co-editor.
