Free Speech is a forum for controversial issues facing Berkeley and California. In the next issue, Christopher Edley Jr., dean of Boalt Hall, will offer a different viewpoint on diversity at the University. Make some of your own free speech on our blog, Bear Bites, at californiamag.typepad.com.

The debates about "diversity" at Berkeley and other University of California campuses often swirl around a single question: Why do so few black and Hispanic Americans become students or faculty? This important question is rarely answered as effectively as it can and should be. In trying to change our collective approach to this question, I speak in sympathy with most of the efforts our administrative leaders are making to recruit and retain students and faculty who are members of historically disadvantaged groups. I also write as someone who has long been in favor of diversity, and who has studied and written about its dynamics in essays and books for more than 30 years.

Why do so few black and Hispanic Americans become students or faculty? Too often, the wrong answer is given, or implied. This wrong answer usually comes in two parts. First, we are constrained by Proposition 209, the ballot measure that prevents us from carrying out affirmative action as we once did. Second, we are not doing as much as we should even within the limits set for us by the voters of the state.

This answer avoids the most important truth relevant to the question: The barriers that most prevent black and Hispanic Americans from finding their way into the University of California are located primarily outside the policies and practices of the University and its various campuses. Those barriers are in the policies and practices of the State of California and the federal government. Those barriers are, above all, a failing public school system and a deficiency in basic social services available to poor people, among whom blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately represented for historic reasons well-understood, including ethnoracial prejudice and the economic and legal position of many immigrants. Even if Proposition 209 were repealed, the chief barriers to increased black and Hispanic participation in the University of California would remain. The frequent talk about overturning Proposition 209 misses the point, and directs our attention away from the actual matrix of inequality in California.

Our leaders in the Office of the President and in the Chancellor's office at Berkeley certainly understand the state of K-12 education in California, and the role of class and immigration in structuring inequality. But these leaders could do more to focus public attention on these truths. A failure to articulate the true character of the problem catches the University in a dangerous trap. By not talking regularly and insistently about the most salient barriers to black and Latino representation, our leaders enable economic and political elites to ignore their own responsibility to diminish inequalities in American life. By invoking the mantra "we must do more" and by lobbying for the reversal of Proposition 209, our academic leaders encourage those elites and their constituencies to blame the persistence of these inequalities on universities. This is the trap: The more responsibility we accept for fixing inequalities, the causes of which do not lie in our own policies and practices, the more we place at risk our capacity to do well what universities are designed and equipped to do. The more we link public support to our ability to increase black and Hispanic participation, the more we risk losing that support when circumstances prevent us from delivering. We also risk narrowing the public's understanding of the role of universities.

Universities expand and disseminate knowledge, and provide advanced training for a multitude of professions. They apply the latest knowledge to critical challenges in contemporary life, including health care, the environment, energy, agriculture, and industry. A campus with genuine intellectual distinction enables students to be close to the advancement of learning in all fields, and vigorously enacts the classic role of forcing students to assess their ideas with evidence and reasoning. That Berkeley does all this is well confirmed by survey after survey, including the recent, widely publicized one by the London Times ranking Berkeley second only to Harvard in all-around strength, and superior even to Harvard in the intellectual stature of its faculty.

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