Colleges, Corporations and Their Missions

Colleges are actually businesses of a kind. Their product – expensively bought, nowadays – is supposed to be mature, academically sound, morally put-together graduates who are prepared to help society by applying the disciplines in which they have been trained to work and think. No doubt, some colleges are better than others at producing this valuable product. But if a college is competently doing the job, an artificial construct of “global engagement” – perhaps expressed by establishing satellite campuses in far-away places – need not be added to the critical mission entrusted to the college.

A college should be committed not only to continuity with its past, but to engagement with a vast future as well. In that spirit, its leaders should strive to create an environment of academic excellence, spiritual strength, personal growth and social opportunity for its students and faculty. That environment enables production of graduates who are academically sound, morally strong, and well-grounded in their faith – thoroughly fitted to do honest, high quality (and therefore “godly”) work in the world. If this isn’t a practical definition of “global relevance,” I don’t know what one would be. Contemporary cynics try to omit the “godly faith” part, but as a man of considerable experience, I would see that as a ruinous omission.

A liberal arts college that I know pretty well tried to follow the popular 21^st century academic practice of defining a vision and “strategic goals” to help the school engage in – wait for it! – “social responsibility,” “global engagement” and “diversity.” Mercifully, that diversion from the college’s true mission lasted for only a brief period. For better than a century that college had produced high-quality graduates who excelled in medicine, education, Christian ministry, foreign missions, music, psychology, science, writing, mathematics, etc. Any college that produces graduates so educated is engaging the world. Every able mathematician, doctor, biologist or preacher helps his corner of the earth. A search for additional “global” meaning is superfluous.

Because “diversity” is today’s hottest campus-topic, many colleges have become preoccupied with plans to make their enrollment and faculty suitably diverse in race, national origin, sexual orientation and gender-of-choice. Some trustees of my old college are pastors and church leaders. Do their churches have diversity plans? Doubtful – probably because they believe people come to church by a divine call. A college is not a church, but in some respects many students are drawn to a campus in mystic, even religious ways. The college I attended (and its people) changed my life. I believe my attendance there was divinely ordered.

Colleges are under extreme pressure to be hospitable to students from many races, backgrounds and cultures. Long-gone is the pre-1960 era, when campuses were mostly stocked with white kids who looked like Central Casting’s idea of a college student. Blacks who once were limited by segregation to a few colleges have now been mainstreamed into most American schools. And a steady stream of Asian and Hispanic students has forever changed the face of American higher education. All this is fine. The country will be strengthened by this racial and cultural enrichment of its educational product, provided that the quality of that product remains high.

The problem lurking in the shadows is how a college reaches this desired mix. Diversity should be a result, not an objective. It generally can’t be programmed without negatively affecting an institution’s product. Many colleges have learned this to their pain. So did a company that I also knew well. The firm grew dramatically and was very strong in early years, when excellence and performance were the watchwords. But then company executives got spooked by bean counters who charged that there weren’t enough skirts or non-white faces in the ranks.

During the rush to make the company “look like America” I heard a (female) human resources manager call middle-aged white men “the company’s biggest problem.” Not a valuable resource; not the champs who did the heavy lifting when the company was zooming upward; just a big, fat problem obstructing true diversity. Many capable men left for friendlier surroundings, and the company hit a flat spot.

Eventually sanity returned. The corporate ship righted itself, and a valuable lesson was learned: namely, that in enterprises requiring excellence, “diversity” cannot be programmed. A look at nearly any sports team tells you all you need to know about how excellence and diversity mix: excellence first; then diversity can be (but might not be) the result.

That company was not just filling seats with warm bodies. It needed people who could perform at high levels. Many got the chance to show what they could do. Those who couldn’t cut it were pushed aside. The successes were disproportionately male and Asian. This displeased critics, but those successful people had prepared for the work at hand, and they possessed the necessary skills. Managers realized that the firm could not succeed if a less qualified person of a desired race or gender was selected in place of a better-qualified person.

Colleges that have waded out into the diversity waters find that the bottom drops off pretty quickly. Clear-minded leaders realized that diversity – however desirable or politically correct – cannot be programmed. A college needs to advertise widely, create a friendly, ethnicity-neutral campus, and select students who are qualified to work in an environment of academic excellence and moral stability. When its graduates finally go out into the world, no one (except some leftist fuss-budgets at the New York Times) will care exactly what their racial mix is. The main question will be: Can they do the job? To understand this, ask yourself: Is the skin-color or ethnicity of my airline pilot or brain-surgeon my first concern?

An acquaintance attended a medical school where it became known that minority students were given exam questions ahead of the exams. When students who lacked this advantage complained, the administration replied that the school “could not afford to have the minority students fail.” That school thought it was succeeding in its diversity “mission.” But it really was failing – at a fundamental level – in its responsibilities to the global community. Excellence – first and always – must be what a college (or a medical school) is about. In Detroit they say, “good-looking junk won’t sell.” And at the ballpark, all that matters is whether you can hit the ball.

Today, activists have evidently decided that the best way to achieve their diversity-goals is to attack “white privilege” and tear down masculinity. It’s a vile strategy – close to being downright “evil” – that is bound to fail, once the moral faction of the country recognizes the danger and is roused to action. Justice and righteousness must prevail. Anything less is unacceptable.

Jackie Robinson made big news when he broke major league baseball’s color-barrier in 1947. Reporters obsessed over the race factor, but Robinson was recruited and signed because he was an excellent player who eventually performed at a high level for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Pro football took longer to achieve colorblind integration. During the 1950s the NFL finally let outstanding players like Bobby Mitchell and Jim Brown participate. The Washington Redskins were the last NFL team to integrate when they signed Mitchell in 1961. Jim Brown was a star fullback for the Cleveland Browns, 1957-’66, but his entry into the league was not celebrated by all.

One of my favorite anecdotes from that time came from Sam Huff, the great Hall of Fame linebacker for the NY Giants and the Redskins. Huff was a West Virginia native whose racial attitudes were still “unreformed,” early in his career. Years later he told an interviewer about a game the Giants played against the Browns in Jim Brown’s rookie season. On the first play of one series, Brown took the handoff and Huff tackled him for a five-yard loss. “You stink, Brown,” Huff snarled, as the play ended. On the second play, the result was the same, with Huff repeating his rebuke more emphatically. “But on third down,” said Huff, “Brown busted off left tackle and ran 50 yards for a touchdown. From the end-zone he yelled to me: ‘How do I smell from here, Sam?’” Huff chuckled at himself as he recalled the valuable lesson he learned when old prejudice collided with overwhelming talent. He called Jim Brown one of the greatest players he ever saw.

If a business or a college (or a sports team) is producing a quality product, no other demonstration of “global involvement” is required. That truth needs remembering today.

 “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” (Frederick Douglass)