Review by Choice Review
This volume affirms Justice Powell's Bakke opinion by providing the most informative collection of empirical evidence (survey databases and longitudinal data) available in one volume. Together with William J. Bowen's The Shape of the River (CH, May'99), this volume provides the footprints of a new tradition of diversity research and scholarship, essential to combat contemporary political and legal attacks on diversity. The contributors stress the responsibility of the higher education community, including law and medical professional schools, and the academic world to develop and produce empirical research to demonstrate how diversity works. The volume examines roles higher learning institutions play in improving or harming student achievement and development. Significant findings include the contributions of diversity to the liberal arts imperative of responsible citizenship; educational benefits of diversity relative to teaching and learning; the value of the apparent natural attentiveness of female and minority faculty to employ active pedagogies; the role of peer groups as a necessary part of the curriculum; and the counterproductivity of class-based admissions policies. The volume offers a creative and groundbreaking application of a policy framework that reexamines the legal debate in the context of nonremedial affirmative action based on Bakke's diversity rationale. Recommended for researchers/faculty, and professionals. A. A. Sisneros University of Illinois at Springfield
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
