Below are some informal notes of the opening address given by Dr. Nancy Cantor,
Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on April 4, 2002 at
“Diversity: Building a Strategic Future: The Third National Conference on Diversity in
Academic Libraries” hosted by the University of Iowa and co-sponsored by the
Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) and the Association of Research Libraries
(ARL). These informal notes are based in part on the outline of Dr. Cantor’s speech, and
in part on what the note taker heard. Please send comments, questions, and corrections to
Tom Peters (tpeters@cic.uiuc.edu).
Dr. Cantor first asked the audience to recognize what inspires our daily efforts to create
diverse communities in our libraries and on our campuses:

The University as a public good: Universities are public goods in the classic
sense. No one owns the university, but everyone needs it. We provide access to
future social mobility. Universities create knowledge with an eye to the public
interest. Universities are model communities that prepare citizens for civic
engagement. Universities are built on the principle of tolerance for difference and
diversity—even conflict.

Libraries are prototypical public goods: Libraries are connectors to the world.
They serve as historical reservoirs and centers of discovery. They are meeting
and mixing places. They exemplify the values of exploration, preservation, and
community.

Diversity is central to the core missions of universities and academic libraries:
Universities and academic libraries cannot serve the public good unless we learn
the fundamental lesson of diversity. The fundamental lesson of diversity is that
excellence and creativity are built on variety, novelty, and challenge. We cannot
think deeply and creatively unless we move beyond our automatic habits of mind
and action. In order to have a vibrant intellectual community, we must mix it up
and cross boundaries and borders. The work of universities and academic
libraries is difficult, because it moves against the social and cognitive economy
that underlies our habits, norms, and entrenched ways of thinking and being. We
are not about comfortable environments. Mixing it up is beneficial to everyone in
the community. Diversity is a compelling educational interest. Library
collections can be thought of either as silos or as launching pads. Libraries should
mix media and voices and values.
Dr. Cantor then explored how universities and academic libraries can be the kinds of
places they need to be in order to be public goods that instantiate diversity.

Universities and academic libraries need to be places apart, yet connected to the
broader society: Universities need to be places apart in the sense that they are not
constrained by the boundaries and norms of normal society. Universities need to
tolerate conflict, tolerate redundancies, and support exploration for its intrinsic
value, despite its expense. To be truly useful public goods, however, universities
need to be deeply, complexly connected to the broader public sphere from which
we arose and to whom we are responsible. We need to encourage social mobility
via higher education and access to information. We need to contribute our
knowledge and discoveries back to the general society, and we need to work in
partnership with other social and economic organizations. Academic libraries
deal on a daily basis with the challenge of being at both a place apart (e.g., efforts
to preserve information materials) and deeply connected and accessible to society
(e.g., efforts to increase access to information).

Who we are influences our success as public goods: We need to create diverse
university communities, with a mix of voices and ideas and interests and life
experiences, not just hire diverse individuals to meet target numbers. We need to
have healthy, supportive disagreements and fights. For whom and with whom do
libraries create meaning?
Dr. Cantor then addressed how universities and academic libraries do this (i.e., fulfill our
mandates to be public goods that are connected to the general society, yet places apart,
where diverse individuals and groups can share ideas and mix it up).

Diversity and academic excellence are inextricably intertwined. We all need to be
public activists. Universities and academic libraries need to look for a fruitful
overlapping of human and intellectual capital.

We need to pay as much attention to who we train as to who we hire: We need to
sustain the intergenerational pipeline of creative, thoughtful, well-educated
citizens. ALA’s Spectrum Initiative and ARL’s internships are good programs in
this area of need.

We need to care about the climate and providing support. We need to create
interest groups, clusters, and networks. Cluster hiring can create intellectual
power bases that can weather the forces of marginalization. We should strive to
avoid making diversity recruitment a competitive point between universities. We
all need to collaborate to achieve diversity.

Create a culture of interaction: Support conflict and differences of opinion, rather
than paper over them. We should be wary of over zealous efforts to protect silos
and turf.

Keep connected to diverse stakeholders and communities:
Dr. Cantor concluded by noting that it is difficult to keep the diversity agenda a central
part of the everyday consciousness of everyone in the university community. Yet that is
what it takes to fulfill our mission of excellence as public goods. When people ask her
why she speaks more often about diversity than about excellence, Dr. Cantor realizes that
others do not share the view that diversity is excellence. In her view, if we care about the
richness of our collections, the crispness of our discoveries, the value of the education we
provide, and the authenticity of our connections to the public interest, we must care both
about who we are and how thoroughly we mix it up—on a daily basis.