The drive to make American universities more diverse shows some success, but consistent and meaningful inclusion of under-represented minorities seems elusive, according to four academics whose own experiences help illuminate the problem. “The civil rights agenda is challenged today in many ways,” says Evelyn Higginbotham, although the U.S. is a far more multiracial country than it was in the early 1960s, when civil rights laws emerged. High unemployment and foreclosure rates, and lower levels of state funding have made it especially hard for minority or poor white students to start and complete an education. Retention problems also threaten faculty diversity in higher education, says Higginbotham. Professors of color may find themselves spread too thin; asked to participate on committees and as advisors, they may not be able to pursue the research required for tenure. “Diversity is not successful when it appears as a revolving door for junior faculty,” she says, and retaining these faculty is essential for recruiting and training the next generation of scholars. Physicist Sylvester James Gates takes stock of diversity from a variety of vantage points. He notes that “nature uses diversity as a survival mechanism.” As an American traveling the world, he has “found American music almost every place,” and credits diversity for creating rock and roll. In physics, and other sciences, “diversity is a force multiplier for innovation You want the most diverse group of people present asking questions.” Gates also has a personal take on diversity and MIT. In 1969, he was one of 50 African American undergraduate students in a class of 1000. “Wow, talk about lack of diversity. We were it.” Those were trying times, and Gates relates episodes of racism on campus, including the routine questioning of black students by campus police, “who wondered who we were.” Gates ultimately decided “MIT was not a place where diversity could be lived out and was genuine,” and left. Although ...