Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

As the war on diversity upends government, corporate and education policies, the history of the idea of diversity has never been more important. David Oppenheimer, a diversity skeptic turned diversity admirer, chronicles how diversity became a foundational value of higher education over the last 200 years, how it evolved as it was adopted by commerce and science, and what the implications are of the current backlash.The diversity principle—the idea that people with different backgrounds, experiences, identities, and viewpoints produce better work by engaging with one another—was a core tenet of the first modern research university, founded in Germany in 1810. It was the inspiration for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, a touchstone of academic freedom; a hallmark of Charles Eliot’s remaking of Harvard in the late 19th century to promote the “clash of ideas”; and a foundation of the 20th-century efforts toward equality of Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Pauli Murray. In telling the story of the divers