New Faces, New Knowledge

firm with the headline, Good News Is: Minds Don't Think Alike. The picture in the ad showed women and racial and ethnic minorities as very much a part of the company team. How many times have we said, Great minds think alike, without stopping to consider how such a simple set of words might encourage homogeneous thinking? In very basic terms, the ad that I saw revealed one of the greatest benefits conferred by diversity the value of having different perspectives on an issue. Major companies seem to be discovering that diversity is vital to their success. If higher education intends to continue to educate students for the world of work, it must also embrace the contributions different perspectives can bring. In other words, institutions need to provide arenas in which students can interact and exchange ideas with professors from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. As the populations of racial and ethnic minority groups continue to grow in this country, the viability of U.S. higher education may depend on the ability of colleges and universities to meet this goal. Unfortunately, recruiting and retaining faculty of color remains one of the most difficult challenges facing American higher education.1 Statistics show that African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans have dismal records compared with other groups in the rates at which they participate in the American educational system. The low representation of people of color among tenure-track and tenured faculty reflects this pattern. The 2000 edition of Minorities