Task Force on Diversity

By B. J. Almond

The recent commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Rice’s first black students served as a reminder of how much education has improved here since the original Rice charter ban on nonwhite students was lifted in the 1960s. Students’ exposure to people of different race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, culture, ethnicity, class, nationality and other distinctions enriches their personal education and prepares them to learn, work and lead in the ever-expanding global marketplace and pluralistic, multicultural world.

To ensure that Rice creates and sustains a heterogeneous and strong scholarly community, President David W. Leebron recently established the President’s Task Force on Diversity at Rice. “Over the next two years,” Leebron says, “this task force will develop recommendations to make sure that we are attracting and retaining a diverse scholarly community and that we are capitalizing on the intellectual opportunities that such diversity offers.”

Members of the task force are drawn from faculty and administration and come from a wide variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.