RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/article_email/is-there-a-hispanic-perspective-on-historical-banana-cultivation-1503355140-lMyQjAxMTE3ODI2MjUyNTIyWj/

Diversity, according to campus dogma, provides real educational benefits. Counting and mingling students and professors by race, ethnicity or gender is supposed to broaden perspectives and enhance classroom learning.

Maybe that’s true in the academic departments built on identity politics. But what critical perspective does a black academic bring to microbiology, civil engineering, or pre-1700 state formation in Ethiopia that a white scholar cannot? What distinctive viewpoint does a Hispanic professor rely on to explain French colonialism, the Afro-Asian history of banana cultivation, or Muslim slave systems that a black instructor cannot?

I taught African history for 40 years at California State University, Chico. When I criticized the overtly divisive racial preferences and gender double standards I witnessed on faculty hiring committees, I was vilified as an “enemy of diversity.” This was rich in unintended irony.

Raised in an orthodox Jewish home in west Baltimore, I graduated from the University of Richmond (founded by Southern Baptists), completed my master’s at Howard University (the country’s pre-eminent historically black college), earned my doctorate in history at UCLA, then taught at a modest liberal arts college. I was once married to a Catholic woman. Hostile to diversity?

As a Jewish American historian of Africa, I specialized in Somalia, a country that’s 99% Muslim. I visited Somalia 10 times, conducting research and teaching at the National University in Mogadishu. Somalis always welcomed me with hospitality and collegiality.

In 1984, while working on a PBS documentary called “The Parching Winds of Somalia,” I sought permission to film Muslim congregants at prayer in a Mogadishu mosque. The imam there, Sheikh Aden, insisted that I guarantee my crew would behave in a “worshipful manner” during filming. A practical scholar and revered community leader, Sheikh Aden knew I was Jewish.

After I led my crew in chanting the Muslim profession of the faith (shahada) in his office, I recall Sheikh Aden telling me: “I know who you are, Geshekter. I wish you were a Muslim of the heart. But you are just a Muslim of the mouth. That’s good enough.” Me, an enemy of diversity?

Defenders of diversity groupthink maintain that Asian or Hispanic students bring especially novel viewpoints to classrooms, making them essential for higher learning. The former president of CSU Chico once assured me that simply having a variety of students clustered by race or ethnicity contributed to a livelier mix in classes. This view is appallingly mistaken.

After four decades of teaching, including more than 6,000 individual class sessions, I recall few undergraduates who brought unique perspectives to any historical topic. My courses explored the different interpretations of evidence used to explain the rise of pre-1700 equatorial states (Buganda, Bunyoro, Kongo), the origins of the Bantu language family, and the spread of Islam among the Swahili city-states. Most students had little previous knowledge of African history, regardless of their skin color or ethnicity. How could they enunciate any perspective unavailable to their classmates?

In her 1994 book “Racism 101,” the black writer Nikki Giovanni reminds students that it takes individual effort, not group identity, to improve themselves. She dismisses claims that black students, simply because of their skin color, ought to be considered a source of special insight. Ms. Giovanni urges them instead to focus on self-discipline and studying hard to succeed.

If I were to single out two cohorts whose members disproportionately enhanced the exchanges in my classrooms, they would be military veterans and strong Christians. The vets were disciplined, rarely missed class, and were exemplary in their academic deportment. They kept pace with the readings, peppered me with questions, and insisted on clarifications.

The Christian students had a genuinely different perspective. When I explained why fossil finds from eastern Africa were central to understanding human evolution, they relished challenging me on creationist grounds. That’s a true diversity of viewpoints.

As a scholar of African history, I taught students without regard for their skin color, ethnicity or gender. This hardly makes me diversity’s enemy—no matter what administrators might say.

Mr. Geshekter is a professor emeritus of African history at California State University, Chico.