5.4 - 6) Make Diversity Our Operating System

The last aspect of pedagogy I'd like to talk about in this lesson is:
6) Making Diversity Your Operating System

That happens to be one of the mottos of the organization I co-founded-- HASTAC-- where we say, "Diversity and difference aren't our deficit, they're our operating system." And that's what we'll be talking about today.

Welcome, Week 5, Segment 3. We're talking about pedagogy, and we're talking about the idea of making diversity our operating system. For this aspect of the future of higher education, I have a tremendous responsibility. Much of this MOOC has been filmed in the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and behind me on the wall is a beautiful portrait of our mainstay, John Hope Franklin, who inspires everything we do. The responsibility is because, in the history of humanity, there aren't too many people-- I'm going to get verklempt-- there aren't too many people more wonderful than John Hope Franklin. John Hope lived from 1915 to March 25th, 2009. He was a dear, dear friend; a mentor; and, when I was Vice-Provost at Duke, it was my honor to be able to create the John Hope Franklin Center, and the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute in his honor. This is very interesting. Many people tried to name minority fellowships or diversity fellowships after him, and he was insistent, insistent, that, if something was going to carry his name, it had to be as expansive as he was. So the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies is what we invented, and he always joked and said, "Yeah, that will do."

John Hope was, in the course of his lifetime, the President of the American Historical Association; the President of the Association of American Historians; the President of Phi Beta Kappa; the first African-American to head the History department at Brooklyn College and at the University of Chicago; was the historian on Brown versus Topeka Board of Education, that landmark case that ended racial segregation in schools, or at least legally did.

But what's most important about John Hope Franklin is a quote, where he said, "My challenge was to weave into the fabric of American history enough presence of blacks so the story of the United States could be told accurately." That's really important, and I'm going to repeat it. "My challenge was to weave into the fabric of American history enough presence of African Americans for the story of the United States to be told accurately." Black history is not an add-on. Diversity is not an add-on. Diversity is our operating system, not because it's compensatory, but because, without it, we are not accurate. Without it, we are censoring. Without it, we are excluding.

John Hope Franklin's famous book, From Slavery to Freedom, was published in 1947. It has been read by, literally, tens of millions of readers. John Hope was a gentleman, he was a wit, he was as warm and wonderful a person as you possibly could have. And it's our job always to live up to his ideas for an accurate history. Make diversity our operating system. That is the future of education, not because it's a good thing to do, but because we need diversity for accuracy. Thank you.