Law School Seminar: The European Roots of the Diversity Argument for Inclusion.

Event Summary

This Law School seminar will be delivered by Professor David Oppenheimer, Berkeley Law, University of California. Prof. Oppenheimer is the founder and Director of the Berkeley Center for Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law.

Prof. Oppenheimer's talk explores the following: employers and universities in Europe and North America routinely advertise a commitment to "diversity." In Europe this is viewed as a 21st century American import. But when we examine the roots of the argument for diversity, we find that it emerged in Germany, France and England in the early nineteenth century, and was closely tied to newly emerging ideas about academic freedom and (in Germany and England) opening Protestant universities to Catholics and Jews. Its export from Europe to America, where it has flourished, illustrates how ideas evolve.