Summary Statement by Presidential Panel:
Shirley Tilghman (chair), Princeton University
Lee Bollinger, Columbia University
Geoffrey Gamble, Montana State University
Earl Richardson, Morgan State University
John Sexton, New York University
Donna Shalala, University of Miami
Lawrence Summers, Harvard University

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The following ideas have been culled from the personal statements of the members of the panel considering the importance and impact of having a diverse faculty and student body.

1. Universities and colleges have always been able to recruit to the professoriate some of the brightest of its students – to inspire them to pursue “the life of the mind”.  The unmatched quality of the higher education system in this country has rested on that success. Today the demographic trends in the U.S. point to dramatic changes that will have profound effects on the academy.  According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, by 2050 Caucasians will be the barest of majorities of Americans.  While the percentage ofAfrican Americans in the population is not predicted to grow over this time, the percentages of Hispanics and Asians are.  These are the students we will be teaching, and out of this group we must recruit the next generation of faculty.  As we look to the next generation of scientists, engineers, humanists and social scientists to study and teach at our universities and colleges, we need to recruit and develop the talents of the entire population of young men and women.  If we do not do so, we will be looking to a smaller and smaller talent pool, which will inevitably lower the quality of our scholars and scientists. 

2. The gender and ethnic background of scholars and scientists has a significant impact on the nature and scope of research being pursued.  This is clear for gender studies, which did not blossom as a field until women joined the academy in significant numbers.  Likewise many history and literature departments have broadened their offerings and areas of scholarship as the result of faculty who comes from non-European backgrounds.   This has greatly enriched the intellectual landscape of scholarship and academic offerings. 

3. On purely pragmatic grounds, our universities and colleges will look increasingly anachronistic if we are not more effective at attracting under-represented minorities into the professoriate.  As other professions succeed in diversifying their workforce, the professoriate will look even more unattractive as a profession to minority students, and we will fall further behind in quality. 

4. Just as a diverse student body is greatly valued because it exposes all students to many points of view in discussions in classrooms and dormitories, so too does a diverse faculty ensure that our students are learning from a faculty whose perspectives on the world represent a broad cross-section of modern thinking.  Our students, whether members of a majority or minority, benefit from an educational setting in which they are exposed to free, unbridled and ideologically unconstrained discourse.  That requires a diverse faculty, not a homogeneous one.

5. A diverse faculty breaks down negative stereotypes of groups for both majority and minority students.  It will be difficult to attract under-represented students to the professoriate until they can identify themselves in such a role.