‘Diversity’ emerged as one of the key themes during the roaring 2014 protests where students and faculty demanded structural reforms. Three UvA professors reflect on diversity based on gender, social class, ethnicity and sexuality prior to the publication of the report ‘Lets do Diversity’

Henny Bos, who has studied homosexuality in the workplace for many years, explains how her work got an unexpected personal twist. One day, the rainbow flag in front of her office accidentally fell down. “Go to hell” was scribbled on the wall where her rainbow flag had been. Also in an academic environment sexual discrimination persists.

Farid Boussaid notices the lack of diversity and overrepresentation of white, middleclass students in his classroom. The ethnic and racial makeup has not changed since the time he was a student himself some twenty years ago. The UvA does not reflect the diversity of the city, as a large public university should, argues Boussaid. Diversity will improve the quality of teaching and learning. After all, new ideas are formed when different schools of thought clash. Teaching is about challenging prejudices and preconceived ideas. This becomes problematic when all students in a classroom look and think alike.

Strategies for diversity

What strategies can we develop to address these issues? To ensure that diversity becomes embedded in every corner of the organisation, Boussaid favours an institutionalized top-down approach. Rachel Spronk shifts the focus to more covert forms of bias and prejudice. Over the years, she collected many stories of sexual harassment, discrimination or simply ignorance or neglect of issues like access to the university for people with a disability. Biases vary per issue and where some are overlooked, others are silent. Ignoring an issue implies at least recognition in order to negate it, but many patterns of prejudice are not just being ignored; they are not even seen.

Spronk also raised a more radical issue, pointing to the fact that some groups in the debate on diversity may become more dominant than others. We often focus on race, gender and sexuality, but within these groups, new norms may arise that are hostile to people who are different. Diversity requires the freedom to disagree or divert, and to achieve this we need sensitization. For Spronk diversity is about unevenly distributed power, which requires us to reflect on who we are, what our privileges are and how we approach others.

Lunch with the board

Embedding diversity in the structures and practices of the university is a complex task, but if our three speakers were to have lunch with the board of the UvA tomorrow, what strategy for incorporating diversity would they prioritize? Bos advocates installing safe zones at the campuses, offering a visible message of affirmation and inclusion. Boussaid would ask our administrators to change their outreach programs in high schools to address diversity in socio-economic background of students in the classroom. Lastly, Spronk argues that, while it is important to talk about these issues in a like-minded setting like this event, it is crucial to include those who are not aware of patterns of prejudice in the debate. You may not be part of the problem, but you can definitely be part of a solution.