"Campuses that have prided themselves on increased diversity in admissions are now wrestling with students who want more control over the institutions they attend, including a say in hiring (even of visiting professors), housing (a theme house at the University of California, Santa Cruz, must be painted in Pan-African colors) and curriculum (among nearly 50 demands presented to the University of Chicago: the creation of courses on the Islamic golden age, sequences on Caribbean and Southeast Asian civilizations, and a required diversity/inclusion course).
All this might remind old-timers of calls in the late 1960s and ’70s to institutionalize a more diverse viewpoint, leading to the establishment of black studies departments. Ralph F. Young, a historian who runs weekly “Dissent in America Teach-ins” at Temple University, predicts that “we will have the 1960s all over again.” But where that era’s activists focused on a few issues, he said, “now it is about everything — everything is under attack."
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