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It has been an increasing concern in American education that students of African American, Mexican American, and Native American origins are not well served by the American educational system. In higher educational institutions, these groups are underrepresented among both students and faculties. Students in these groups in higher educational institutions have been more alienated and thus their experiences in college have been far more discouraging than students of other groups (J. Anderson, personal communication, April 2001). Although there have been some affirmative efforts in assuring access to and participation in higher education by these groups and considerable progress has been made, people of color continue to remain substantially underrepresented in colleges and universities. They accounted for only 12.9 percent of all full time faculty and 9.6 percent of full professors in 1995…. Tenure rates for tenure-track faculty are also much lower for faculty of color than for White faculty (American Council on Education, 1998, p. 41).

In this chapter, EYES theory proposes that international students view themselves and appraise their social standing of their own race based in relationship to extant social perceptions of racial stereotypes in the United States. These stereotypes are determined by geography which exude from the legacy of enslavement in the United States. EYES theory proposes that international students view racial differences through these dynamics by assessing their own identity in regards to race, colorsim and group identification. Specifically, international students use racial groups to classify, rank, and understand racial differences that are informed by these social geographies that impart a white/black racial discourse by which international students navigate their social status. EYES theory challenges the intellectual perception of heterogeneity among international students and in regards to race posits that international students experience mico and macrolevel contexts regarding race due to the socio-historical legacy of racism in the United States. The authors anticipate that EYES theory may have implications for study in other geographical contexts where a black white dichotomy serves as the parameter for understanding racial relationships and hegemony.

Chester Whitney Wright (1879–1966) received his A.B. in 1901, A.M. in 1902 and Ph.D. in 1906, all from Harvard University. After teaching at Cornell University during 1906–1907, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1907 to 1944. Wright was the author of Economic History of the United States (1941, 1949); editor of Economic Problems of War and Its Aftermath (1942), to which he contributed a chapter on economic lessons from previous wars, and other chapters were authored by John U. Nef (war and the early industrial revolution) and by Frank H. Knight (the war and the crisis of individualism); and co-editor of Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics (1913). Wright’s Wool-Growing and the Tariff received the David Ames Wells Prize for 1907–1908, and was volume 5 in the Harvard Economic Studies. I am indebted to Holly Flynn for assistance in preparing Wright’s biography and in tracking down incomplete references; to Marianne Johnson in preparing many tables and charts; and to F. Taylor Ostrander, as usual, for help in transcribing and proofreading.

Hugh Africa, Council on Higher Education (South Africa)

W.E.B. Du Bois proclaimed the colorline as the problem of the 20th century; in similar fashion, the problem of the 21st century could be characterized as the “wealth divide” or more clearly, the challenge of extreme economic disparity alongside broad socio-cultural diversity. Women-of-color scholars have used various concepts such as “the matrix of domination” (King, 1988), “intersectionality” (Collins, 1991), “borderlands” (Anzaldúa, 1987) and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 1995) to demonstrate that the “problems of the 21st century” are related to rapidly expanding diversity alongside stubbornly persistent economic inequities across race, ethnicity, gender, class, language, citizenship and nation. Extensive technological, economic, political and social changes, along with immigration, have coalesced to produce a global community of great diversity and interpenetration. Unfortunately, this global community continues to be fractured by extreme disparities in wealth, divided into “have” and “have-not” societies (Chua, 2003).

Innovation within a bureaucratic University requires broad collaboration from all agents – those internal as well as external – to promote institutional goals for positive outcomes in novel yet compelling ways. As suggested by the preceding set of chapters, the environment, particularly the cultural values in higher education institutions, can either facilitate change outcomes to support or limit diversity efforts. The same momentum that compels agents within higher education to adopt or adjust their cultural values, also contributes to discourse within the University about intertwined goals related to curriculum, academic programs and other endeavors. Thus, postsecondary institutions with genuine goals to promote diversity will have these goals reflected in their activities and at core layers of the organization to influence institutional plans and actions.