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[jackofallchem]

They are explaining what kind of diversity they want.  There are basically three types of diversity that I have noticed.  I will put them in terms of cars.

Traditional (liberal) diversity:  Red cars, black cars, yellow cars, white cars, brown cars, and every other color with a wide variety of shades.  All are 2008 Honda Accords with the exact same option package.

Intellectual diversity as desired my some conservatives:  Hondas, Jaguars, BMW's, Chevys, Fords, and every other make and model with all kinds of options.  Only available in white, however.

What I always thought diversity meant:  the Wal-Mart parking lot on Saturday afternoon

I have actually chosen what churches to visit in a new town based on this idea.

[eumaios]

They are explaining what kind of diversity they want.  There are basically three types of diversity that I have noticed.  I will put them in terms of cars.

Traditional (liberal) diversity:  Red cars, black cars, yellow cars, white cars, brown cars, and every other color with a wide variety of shades.  All are 2008 Honda Accords with the exact same option package.

Intellectual diversity as desired my some conservatives:  Hondas, Jaguars, BMW's, Chevys, Fords, and every other make and model with all kinds of options.  Only available in white, however.

What I always thought diversity meant:  the Wal-Mart parking lot on Saturday afternoon

I have actually chosen what churches to visit in a new town based on this idea.

So diversity privileges inept parking and letting an SUV with a big V-8 idle for 20 minutes while the driver waits for a parking spot closer to the entrance?

Sorry. It's a nice analogy, actually. But I'd describe the parking lot of our local Wal-Mart as a Keystone Kops movie directed by Roger Corman and Tobe Hooper.

[larryc]

It means they want diversity in terms of all the usual categories but also any new ones that get invented this week, and that they will practice a certain amount of affirmative action but won't call it that.

[saguaro]

It means that the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences is buzzword-compliant.

[acrimone]

It means they want diversity in terms of all the usual categories but also any new ones that get invented this week, and that they will practice a certain amount of affirmative action but won't call it that.

Probably... but how do you get that from the text?

[polly_mer]

It means they want diversity in terms of all the usual categories but also any new ones that get invented this week, and that they will practice a certain amount of affirmative action but won't call it that.

Probably... but how do you get that from the text?

Try magnifying the period at the end of the first sentence.

[vagarh]

What the f*ck does this mean?

We, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, use the term ‘diversity’ to mean the desirability and value of many kinds of individual differences while at the same time acknowledging and respecting that socially constructed differences based on such characteristics as gender, race, ethnicity, class, ability, health status, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, and geographical and cultural background exist within systems of power that create and sustain inequality, hierarchy, and privilege.

I've been trying to parse this for twenty minutes, and the closest I can come is something like:

The diversity of a student population is the desirability of their differences, but only their actual differences, not any social meaning attached to those differences because social meanings get used for bad things.

Which makes no sense.

Here's how I'd parse it, but this rests on the idea that diversity = good, which seems to make some sense, when we take the statement in context with the rest of the webpage.

Subject: We
Main Verb: use
Object: the term 'diversity' to mean the desirability and value of many kinds of individual differences
===
That's it for the whole of the main thought. We then move into a subordinate clause (misplaced, since it ought to be as close to the antecedent 'we' as possible)

They do this because someone could read the above and say, 'Well, sure, white and Christian and heterosexual are all individual differences, and they're valuable and desireable.
To avoid this, they add the following:

Understood subject: We
Subordinate clause's verbs: acknowledge and respect
The object is the whole indirect statement following: 'that socially constructed differences based on such characteristics as gender, race, ethnicity, class, ability, health status, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, and geographical and cultural background exist within systems of power that create and sustain inequality, hierarchy, and privilege.'

More correct--but equally cumbersome--would be:

We, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, while acknowledging and respecting that socially constructed differences based on characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, ability, health status, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, and geographical and cultural background exist within systems of power that create and sustain inequality, hierarchy, and privilege, use the term ‘diversity’ to mean the desirability and value of many kinds of individual differences .

[jackofallchem]

So diversity privileges inept parking and letting an SUV with a big V-8 idle for 20 minutes while the driver waits for a parking spot closer to the entrance?

Sorry. It's a nice analogy, actually. But I'd describe the parking lot of our local Wal-Mart as a Keystone Kops movie directed by Roger Corman and Tobe Hooper.
[/quote]
Welcome to the diverse world we live in!  Thank you for making my point for me.  There is a difference between the actual diversity in society and the social engineering attempt at "ideal" diversity that many university diversity programs seek to attain.

[acrimone]

Object: the term 'diversity' to mean the desirability and value of many kinds of individual differences

Thanks, I guess.  I mean, I know how to diagram a sentence.  I just don't see how this Object (and the object really is just "the term 'diversity'") makes any sense.

Upon further reflection, though, I guess I could see it in this way.  Imagine an admissions officer discussing a student who is smart, accomplished, and, say, a transgendered half-Black half-Eskimo immigrant from Liberia.  Normally we might expect the admissions officer to say:

"There is a great deal of desirability and value in this candidate because of the many kinds of individual differences he has... uh... from... himself."

But now the admissions officer just has to say:

"There is a great deal of diversity in this candidate."

Now, that still doesn't make sense, because one person can't really be diverse in the sense they seem to want to use it.  But it at least makes it so that it's not completely nonsensical specifically because desirability and value don't seem to fit.  Under this reading, they do.  Diversity becomes a shorthand word for "what we want" in a particular sense.

But damn, it still makes no sense.

[vagarh]

Thanks, I guess.  I mean, I know how to diagram a sentence.

Well, when you say you don't understand a sentence and took 20 minutes trying to parse it, don't be surprised if someone misunderstands you.

I just don't see how this Object (and the object really is just "the term 'diversity'") makes any sense.

Upon further reflection, though, I guess I could see it in this way.  Imagine an admissions officer discussing a student who is smart, accomplished, and, say, a transgendered half-Black half-Eskimo immigrant from Liberia.  Normally we might expect the admissions officer to say:

"There is a great deal of desirability and value in this candidate because of the many kinds of individual differences he has... uh... from... himself."

I think it would be 'the differences the individual has from other members of our student body', not 'differences from himself'.

But now the admissions officer just has to say:

"There is a great deal of diversity in this candidate."

I think it would be 'This candidate adds to the diversity of our student body', assuming that they don't have a large percentage of transgendered Liberians of Eskimo and African descent.

Now, that still doesn't make sense, because one person can't really be diverse in the sense they seem to want to use it.  But it at least makes it so that it's not completely nonsensical specifically because desirability and value don't seem to fit.  Under this reading, they do.  Diversity becomes a shorthand word for "what we want" in a particular sense.

But damn, it still makes no sense.

Only because you seem to think that they want to use diversity in a way that is limited to the individual--where is that coming from? Of course a single individual can't be 'diverse'; only a population can. Individuals within a population have differences from each other, not from themselves.

[vagarh]

It means they want diversity in terms of all the usual categories but also any new ones that get invented this week, and that they will practice a certain amount of affirmative action but won't call it that.

But as far as what the sentence means in practice, I think that's spot-on.

[acrimone]

Only because you seem to think that they want to use diversity in a way that is limited to the individual--where is that coming from? Of course a single individual can't be 'diverse'; only a population can. Individuals within a population have differences from each other, not from themselves.

Only because I was trying to be charitable.  Look what happens if you use it in a collective sense (which I agree would be the proper way to use the word):

"Our student body has great diversity."

Thus:

"Our student body has great the desirability and value of individual differences."

That's a horrific sentence by any standards.  So we alter it a little and treat diversity in a slightly stilted fashion:

"Our student body has a great deal of diversity"

Which gives us:

"Our student body has a great deal of the desirability and value of individual differences."

That, too, is a horrific sentence.  So there's this mass of individual differnces that have desirability and value... and a bunch of that desirability is possessed by the student body?  What?

Even if you clean it up and add "their" before individual, you still get

"Our student body has a great deal of the desirability and value of their individual differences"

But that's hardly a charitable fix; that is saying nothing because who else is going to have it?  That's like saying, "Mark has many of Mark's characteristics."  

Or we could try it this way:

"Our student body is diverse."

We've changed diversity (a noun) to an adjective, so we do the same...

"Our student body is desirable and valuable..."

Then what?  How do we work the "of individual differences" into this?  No one has the "fast" of something.  Genitive expressions like that only operate on nouns (and things that function like nouns like gerunds).

But obviously if we change it to a gerund (diversifying?) we're going to do great violence to the concept.

"Our student body's diversifying."

And...

"Our student body's desiring and valuing...."

Nope.  That's not going to work either.

[vagarh]

"Our student body has great diversity."

Thus:

[...]

Or we could try it this way:

"Our student body is diverse."

We've changed diversity (a noun) to an adjective, so we do the same...

"Our student body is desirable and valuable..."

Then what?  How do we work the "of individual differences" into this?  No one has the "fast" of something.  Genitive expressions like that only operate on nouns (and things that function like nouns like gerunds).

But obviously if we change it to a gerund (diversifying?) we're going to do great violence to the concept.

"Our student body's diversifying."

And...

"Our student body's desiring and valuing...."

Nope.  That's not going to work either.

One plainly can't, with this construction, swap the whole phrase after 'to mean' with 'diversity' wherever one wants. This doesn't necessarily make it ungrammatical, though, and I think it might be because this is a limiting genitive of description--like if someone were to say, 'They were men of violence, not of honour', or re-worded, 'They were men with regard to violence, but not with regard to honour'.

What if we were to see:

'We use "intelligence" to mean the value of individual intellects.'

Okay, so clearly, we can see that the 'we' here is privileging 'intelligence' as a positive and sought-after quality among the individual intellects of a population; perhaps because of this specific connotation they want to use, they are giving us this definition. One can certainly disagree with this statement: are all individual intellects valuable? The 'we' here seems to think so.

So with this definition, one could say:
'Our student body is intelligent'
and therefore:
'Our student body is valuable with regard to [their] individual intellects'

and

'Our student body has great intelligence'
and therefore:
'Our student body has great value with regard to [their] individual intellects'

so finally

'Our student body has great diversity'
and therefore:
'Our student body has great desireability and value with regard to individual differences'

and

'Our student body is diverse'
and therefore:
'Our student body is desireable and valuable with regard to individual differences'.


I think.

[acrimone]

"Our student body has great diversity."

Thus:

[...]

Or we could try it this way:

"Our student body is diverse."

We've changed diversity (a noun) to an adjective, so we do the same...

"Our student body is desirable and valuable..."

Then what?  How do we work the "of individual differences" into this?  No one has the "fast" of something.  Genitive expressions like that only operate on nouns (and things that function like nouns like gerunds).

But obviously if we change it to a gerund (diversifying?) we're going to do great violence to the concept.

"Our student body's diversifying."

And...

"Our student body's desiring and valuing...."

Nope.  That's not going to work either.

One plainly can't, with this construction, swap the whole phrase after 'to mean' with 'diversity' wherever one wants. This doesn't necessarily make it ungrammatical, though, and I think it might be because this is a limiting genitive of description--like if someone were to say, 'They were men of violence, not of honour', or re-worded, 'They were men with regard to violence, but not with regard to honour'.

What if we were to see:

'We use "intelligence" to mean the value of individual intellects.'

Okay, so clearly, we can see that the 'we' here is privileging 'intelligence' as a positive and sought-after quality among the individual intellects of a population; perhaps because of this specific connotation they want to use, they are giving us this definition. One can certainly disagree with this statement: are all individual intellects valuable? The 'we' here seems to think so.

So with this definition, one could say:
'Our student body is intelligent'
and therefore:
'Our student body is valuable with regard to [their] individual intellects'

and

'Our student body has great intelligence'
and therefore:
'Our student body has great value with regard to [their] individual intellects'

so finally

'Our student body has great diversity'
and therefore:
'Our student body has great desireability and value with regard to individual differences'

and

'Our student body is diverse'
and therefore:
'Our student body is desireable and valuable with regard to individual differences'.


I think.

I think you're close. 

It's really the definite article in the phrase "the desirability" that's causing havoc, isn't it?

[sockgumbee]

I think Vagarh is spot on. The CLA&HS defined what they mean by diversity. They offer a definition so that when you see that word in their materials you'll know what they mean. I don't think you can parse this in the sense of some how leaving out the word diversity because as they say the whole is more than the sum of it's parts.

That said, their definition leaves open what "types of differences" they desire and value since they qualify their definition with "many types" not all types. But after all they are an institution--like I mentioned before these kinds of statements have to be broad. So LarryC may or may not be right. After all human beings have to implement whatever policies are beholden to this definition of diversity.

here, here Acrimone that one person can't in themselves be diverse--at least in the sense that, I think, CLA&HS are promoting/claiming.

In regard to the social engineering that Jack of All Chem mentions: always been there and I guess will always be there--what changes is the groups that are targeted. For instance the GI Bill for Ed: until the last ten years few women were among the recipients because they could not be soldiers--did not enlist in the numbers men did. And of course, as individual and groups of human beings have to implement this "social engineering" there are always ways to subvert the policies, rules, system. But educated, hetro white men often don't realized that the cards were stacked in their favor because this was never as they say Marked--just all the other groups are. When one is in the "Norm" as my high school chem teacher used to say (not to be confused with the name Norm) it's easy to think that recruiting practices which target specific groups are "social engineering" and everything that came before was not.


However, perhaps you could say that "The individual differences within our student body are desirable and valuable, even as we recognize social constructions of  . . . <head nod to Acrimone and Vagarh>