Candide at the University of Virginia

When I was working in President Casteen's office as one of seven assistants to the president, I begged to be assigned to be the ex officio member of the Commission of Diversity and Equity. After a couple of meetings, I discovered several administrative academic realities that in my Candide-like naivete I found discouraging, so disappointing that after several months of stewing I came to the conclusion that the I was not suited to my job in the office of the president.

Anyway, here is what I saw:

1. As a (low-level) member of the president's staff, I was serving as window-dressing. My opinions were unwanted and when offered, resented by the professors supposedly fact-finding and deliberating.
2. Several identical commissions with the same charge had previously laboriously researched, deliberated, and written reports of many pages that presented reasonable recommendations to ameliorate the problem of inequality at the university.
3. These recommendations were never implemented.
4. The current commission were not interested in their predecessors' painstaking work. They rejected suggestions to even read the earlier reports.
5. The committee appeared to have been assembled to propose the appointment of a vice president for diversity and equity. 

In 2007 Vice President for Diversity and Equity in a glossy pamphlet offered a summary of the office's accomplishments during its first year:

The Office for Diversity and Equity (ODE) has supported several
efforts across Grounds and beyond. For example, our partnership with the School of Engineering has resulted in the receipt of a grant of $5 million from the National Science Foundation that has established and solidified partnerships with several Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The grant dovetails nicely with the institutional focus on improving the sciences, and opens a pipeline for an additional flow of graduate students of color in those fields.

 
On a different note altogether, we are extremely fortunate to have enlisted the involvement of several of
the University’s most outstanding graduates to serve as members of the new Alumni Diversity Advisory
Committee. This multi-racial, cross-generational group has provided important insights into ways that we can
continue to identify and recruit outstanding students of color and has suggested approaches that might help
our undergraduate population reach out and engage students from diverse backgrounds.

We are very pleased to have developed a relationship with the Journal of Race and Policy that has resulted in the publication of several papers in the spring/summer 2007 issue from the inaugural University of Virginia
Symposium on Race and Society (SYMRS) – In Katrina’s Wake: Racial Implications of the New Orleans
Disaster. The Schools of Medicine and Nursing and the Medical Center sponsored the highly successful
second national SYMRS, which focused on health care disparities- At the Crossroads: Racial Implications of
America’s Health Care Crisis.

With the publication of our electronic newsletter, Dimensions of Diversity at U.Va., we now have a means to
share information about significant accomplishments throughout the University community with over 20,000
alumni, students, faculty, and staff. 


Dr. Harvey served in the office for four years. When he stepped down, Dr. Marcus Martin took his place. So, it looks like that in the end everything worked out for the best.