GE Governance Set to Tackle Diversity Task

Even though my advocacy of the UCLA College’s proposed
diversity requirement is readily available, I feel compelled to
address a few misconceptions about the requirement that have been
advanced by Professor Matt Malkan’s submission,
“Diversity requirement needs definition, review” (Nov.
30).

The most important of these misconceptions concern the looming
task of determining which GE courses would carry diversity credit,
which Malkan believes to be hampered by a lack of definition in the
requirement and by the sheer size and complexity of the task.

He also points to the seeming oddity that some courses have
already been identified as having made a case for diversity (he
lists a few from music history and art history), while others,
whose topics would seem to offer perspectives on diversity, have
not been so identified.

While his implication that one can tell from a course’s
title whether it should count as a diversity course seems to
contradict his claim of the difficulty of the GE Governance
Committee’s task, I wish to focus primarily on these three
objections; I will consider the case of one of his listed courses
(which I happen to teach) and will outline the plans for GE
Governance to carry out its charge if the diversity requirement
passes.

My course on the American musical treats the topic from the
standpoint of the central role that particular themes ““ among
them national identity, racial difference, exoticism, orientalism
and gender and sexuality ““ have played in the genre’s
development. The genre of the musical is a natural for considering
these themes, given its roots in American ambivalence regarding
European “high” culture, its long association with
blackface minstrelsy, its long-standing symbiotic relationship with
jazz and its importance for gay subcultures and other marginalized
groups. Yet one cannot determine any of this from the title of the
course.

The task before GE Governance, then, will be to determine which
courses, as they are taught, deserve to count as diversity courses.
This is relatively easy in many cases. In other cases, more
information will be needed from departments before making a
determination, but the process will not be as daunting as that
undertaken during the reform of GEs completed two and a half years
ago.

It will, however, require the temporary augmentation of GE
Governance’s diversity subcommittee, as was already done in
spring 2004 for its review of the proposal. In endorsing the
proposal, GE Governance is well aware of the task before it, which
falls somewhere between the extreme difficulty Professor Malkan
imagines and the relative ease, based on considering only a
course’s stated topic, that he also implies.

The deliberate broadness of the proposal’s definition of
diversity allows for departments to make individual cases for
diversity credit for courses grounded in their particular
disciplines.

Professor Malkan’s article also has less weighty
inaccuracies. The proposal originated, not in the Undergraduate
Students Association Council, but in the Undergraduate Council
““ a standing committee of the Academic Senate ““ whose
work was assisted by representatives from the USAC Academic Affairs
Commission. Also, his claim that the requirement will stand in the
way of graduation for transfer students is false because transfer
students would mostly not be affected by this requirement.

More reasonably, Professor Malkan asks why we need a diversity
requirement if diversity courses already exist. Beyond ensuring
that all four-year students actually take at least one of these
courses, the Faculty Executive Committee Web site explains that the
requirement will “provide a mechanism for ensuring that
courses addressing diversity issues continue to be developed and
offered” and demonstrate “a tangible and public
commitment to addressing diversity-related issues as part of
UCLA’s mission to educate our student-citizens.”

Knapp is the chair of the GE Governance Committee and the
secretary of the College Faculty Executive Committee. He is also a
professor of musicology.