The College Fix

I couldn’t believe my eyes: I was reading something nuanced and intelligent about diversity from a college bureaucrat.

Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria has a first name that non-Indians may not have encountered before they meet him. He used to wonder why “executives tended to look and address” his faculty colleague by name (Bob), and not him when he was a junior professor.

“Instead of assuming I was witnessing bias,” Nohria writes in The Washington Post:

I began belaboring my self-introduction: “My first name is Nitin — as in ‘stick to your knittin’.’ I know it can be hard to pronounce, so it won’t bother me if you get it wrong,” I’d say. By speaking up about the issue, I reduced people’s fear of misspeaking, and they responded by making it clear that they intended to include me in the conversations.

How would a college student today with an unfamiliar name deal with someone not addressing them? File a grievance, squat in the provost’s office, demand mandatory social justice training … or use common sense?

It’s this failure to use common sense and show grace in confusing situations that Nohria says colleges are botching when they try to practice the “inclusion” part of “diversity and inclusion,” that unobjectionable-in-principle dyad that’s often wielded as a club against less enlightened people on campus.

Guess who’s often the victim of that club:

On many campuses, political conservatives feel as under-represented and alienated as any other minority group. Rather than reaching for a copy of “Hillbilly Elegy,” we should encourage students to be less fearful about talking to people who may have very different political views than their own. To enable this, one of our MBA students, Henry Tsai, has built an app called Hi From the Other Side that matches people with opposing political views, with an eye toward starting conversations. At a time when political polarization is hindering our democracy, this form of inclusion is of paramount importance.

What’s refreshing about Nohria’s thoughts is how they encourage students to see things through someone else’s eyes without bashing them over the head or demanding penance.

He shares how a dean once took him aside to note that Nohria’s advice to younger colleagues on how to get ahead – show up early and leave late – could discourage faculty who want to start families:

At first, I reacted defensively. There’s nothing wrong with praising industriousness, I insisted. It’s a value that’s deeply resonant with my immigrant self-narrative.

But after a moment’s reflection, my view shifted. No matter what my intention, I needed to try to understand how people with different lives and backgrounds were experiencing my words.

https://twitter.com/WelchDad/status/865956103674376192

Other examples of how people can see vastly different intentions in the same action include the shuttering of dorms and dining halls during holiday breaks (which hurts students that can’t afford to travel home) and the use of pre-existing networks to get a job after graduating (less common among minorities and poorer students).

But tough conversations depend on each party attributing good faith to the other from the start, Nohria says:

The biggest impediment to creating a culture of inclusiveness is the fear or stigma that accompanies conversations about race, gender, socioeconomics, politics or other types of difference. All too often, we think the risk of causing offense is so great that we just decide to stay silent.

He encourages members of the campus community to raise their concerns “gently” and don’t assume “the person in charge” knows your feelings when they make a decision adverse to your interests:

Often, offenses against inclusiveness are unintentional, and building mutual understanding can lead to a remedy — and these changes can add up. History shows that large-scale social change usually comes incrementally, one small step at a time.

I have no confidence that student activists will heed this mature and thoughtful advice in the least.

It’s pretty clear who on the average campus is trying to keep others from participating in these conversations, to drill into them the preapproved and socially acceptable views for that week – and to angrily seek sweeping change while insulting and threatening those in a position to help them a little now, and more later.

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