Defending Diversity
9/15/2004By Tom Nugent
"I've been teaching ethnomusicology for many years," says Lester Monts (Ph.D. '80), senior vice provost for academic affairs, senior counselor to the president, and professor of music at the University of Michigan, "and diversity is the whole point of that discipline." Ethnomusicology, Monts explains, is the study of music in the broad domain of culture and society but with the primary focus being on the folk and traditional cultures of the world.
Monts, an accomplished orchestral trumpeter, hums a classical melody to illustrate his point. "If you want to know how powerful diversity can be in music," he says, "just listen to Dvorak's New World Symphony, where he introduces themes influenced by the Negro spirituals he'd heard while in the United States in the 1890s. If you listen to the Second Movement of that symphony, you'll hear the famous 'Going Home' melody played by the English horn. That section of the symphony owes its style and melodic content to the spirituals, yet it finds its way into one of the most well-known compositions in the symphonic repertoire."
Now Monts raps on his office table and hums the parts of the violas and cellos. "All at once, you're getting a very American sound from Dvorak, and it's extremely powerful because it contains all these different indigenous elements—such as the African American spirituals, Native American musical elements, and also some of the influences derived from his east European homeland and transplanted in the Czech-Bohemian immigrant communities in Iowa."
Monts says that many of the great classical composers employed this kind of musical diversity. "Think of the folk elements in Tchaikovsky, in Rimsky-Korsakov, in Chopin and Liszt and even in J.S. Bach," he says. "Can you see why I tell my students that diversity is such an integral part of their education? . . . Diversity isn't just a moral or political issue—it's an intellectual issue."
But diversity is also a political and legal issue. And Monts played a key role in preparing the University of Michigan's recent affirmative action case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The controversial 5-4 decision (June 23, 2003) in two five-year-old equal-access cases involving admissions procedures at Michigan was a complex exercise in jurisprudence, say legal analysts, but the bottom line was straightforward. According to the majority on the court, considering race among the criteria in selecting applicants for admission to U.S. colleges and universities is constitutionally acceptable, although the court also ruled that schools would be prohibited from awarding specific race-based "admissions points."
(The University of Minnesota does not use race-based points in its admissions process but does consider an applicant's race along with such factors as leadership experiences and musical or athletic ability. Academic qualifications are the primary consideration for all applicants to the University.)
For colleges and universities nationwide, the ruling meant that devising special admissions procedures in order to ensure equal access to higher education for traditionally underrepresented minority candidates was legally sanctioned.
Reacting to the court's decision, University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman described the ruling as a victory for her university as well as for all of higher education. "This is a resounding affirmation that will be heard across the land," Coleman said, "and I believe these rulings in support of affirmative action will go down in history as among the great landmark decisions of the Supreme Court."
The Supreme Court ruling was especially rewarding for Monts. As senior vice provost, Monts had spent much of the previous decade designing and implementing strategies aimed at boosting diversity on campus, and his efforts had paid off. By the end of the 2002-03 school year, more than one-fourth of the undergraduate students at his university consisted of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, or Native Americans—a soaring rate that has helped make Michigan a model of diversity in higher education.
"We were absolutely thrilled that the court agreed with us about the importance of diversity on campus," Monts says, "and I think a key factor was that we were able to show that granting equal access to the university isn't just about equity and justice. It's also about quality of education—about the fact that students simply learn better in an environment that includes a diverse group of people from diverse backgrounds.
"I'm convinced that the best argument for affirmative action in higher education is the intellectual argument," adds Monts. "I don't think there's any doubt we can all learn more if we guarantee equal access to colleges and universities for everyone, regardless of race, religion, or color."
Monts's childhood was shaped by the issue of equal access to education. He grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and says he can't forget the racial violence he witnessed almost daily in 1957, after President Dwight Eisenhower sent troops to Arkansas to protect nine black students—known as "The Little Rock Nine"—who would integrate the all-white Central High.
Monts was 10 years old that fall, an eager fourth-grader whose world changed overnight, he says, with the arrival of federal troops—and with the fiery, defiant speeches from segregationist Governor Orval Faubus. "Suddenly we were getting bomb threats at my elementary school," Monts recalls, "and night riders were roaming through the black neighborhoods after dark. A great deal of violence was being perpetrated against black people, day in and day out."
Monts knew most of the families of the Little Rock Nine and remembers standing on the playground at recess watching transport planes from the 101st Airborne fly in with soldiers. Every morning, troops escorted his neighbor, Carlotta Walls, one of the nine, to high school. "It was pretty thrilling to hear every night at the dinner table how black people were asserting themselves politically, something that was rare in the South in those days," he says.
Inspired by those nine students, Monts vowed that he would follow in their footsteps. He enrolled at mostly white Arkansas Polytechnic College, where he soon became the first black student to live in the campus dorms. Although occasionally jeered by other students, he held onto his dream of a college education, even after a group of students squirted lighter fluid under his door and set it afire.
"That was a painful incident," says Monts, "but it only made me more determined to succeed. I was hungry for an education, hungry to learn the trumpet. And I've always been proud of the fact that it was right around the time of that incident when I became the principal trumpet in our college symphonic band."
After graduating from Arkansas Tech with a bachelor's degree in music education in 1970 and then his master's in music from the University of Nebraska two years later, Monts signed on for his first college teaching post, at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He loved teaching, he says, but he also loved performing—and when he saw a chance to study the trumpet under a "truly great teacher" on the faculty at the University of Minnesota, he jumped at it.
Monts arrived in the Twin Cities in the fall of 1975 and quickly began refining his talent under the tutelage of Charles Schlueter, principal trumpet for the Minnesota Orchestra (formerly the Minneapolis Symphony). At about the same time, Monts began working toward his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology, studying African musical and cultural traditions.
Challenged as never before, Monts shuttled between trumpet performances and his academic work. "Lester was a remarkably dedicated student," recalls his major professor, now-retired ethnomusicology professor Alan Kagan, "and he was one of the very few students I ever saw who could manage the transition between musical performance and musical scholarship. It's very difficult to go from performing to research, but Lester had the determination to make it happen."
Schlueter remembers Monts as a trumpet player who had "tremendous facility on the instrument and tremendous dedication as a student. He also had terrific range. Lester was the only student I ever had who could play the Trumpet Concerto by Michael Haydn—it was like he owned that piece," Schlueter says.
"I loved studying with Charlie Schlueter," says Monts of his former teacher, now the principal trumpet for the Boston Symphony. "He taught me a whole range of new techniques, but most of all he taught me self-confidence as a performer. Charlie helped all his students land gigs around Minneapolis and St. Paul, and he introduced me to some unforgettable experiences.
"I remember Charlie setting me up for a gig with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra to perform a piece by Aaron Copland—and when I arrived at the rehearsal, I was amazed to find Copland himself standing on the podium. I could hardly believe it. And at one point, he even chewed me out: 'First trumpeter, you played a B-flat instead of a B-natural!' I showed him the music, and he laughed: 'You're right—it's a manuscript error!'
"For me, that was one of those defining moments, when you realize how far you've come. There I was, a kid in my late 20s from way down in Arkansas, rehearsing onstage with Aaron Copland. Wow!"
Specializing in music of the Baroque era, Monts has in his career also performed with the Omaha Symphony, the Erie Philharmonic, the Santa Barbara Symphony, the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, among others.
On the academic side, Monts moved on to the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he became dean of undergraduate affairs, and spent one year as a visiting professor at Case Western Reserve University. In 1993 he was tapped to become professor of music and an academic administrator in Ann Arbor. By then, Monts would be well-known to ethnomusicologists for his research on the musical culture of the Vai people of Liberia, which had formed the centerpiece of his Ph.D. dissertation at Minnesota.
In addition to studying Vai traditional music for more than 25 years in Liberia, Monts and his wife, Jeanne, created a foundation that works to preserve Liberian traditional culture. Monts spent years observing and recording traditional Vai music, notably that associated with two secret societies—Sande (for women) and Poro (for men)—and the music of Islam. Today, many of these materials are published as CDs and video documentaries by Folkways Records and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
Referring not only to music but to all academic pursuits, Monts says, "If you aren't exposed to other cultures, you won't be able to fully understand your own."
One year after the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, Michigan has seen its number of minority applicants decrease slightly (see article on page 26). But Monts does not anticipate this will be a trend. On the contrary, he is certain the court's ruling—as with the integration of schools in his hometown of Little Rock—will enhance higher education in the United States far into the future.
"I'm a hopeful man, and I'm an optimistic man," Monts says. "Just in my lifetime, I've seen our world change almost beyond recognition. There's nothing that we can't do—if we can just keep on educating our young people and keep on fighting the forces of ignorance."
Tom Nugent, an alumnus of the University of Michigan, is a freelance writer in Hastings, Michigan.
 | | | |  | | The Supreme Court Decision One Year Later | One year after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of affirmative action as a strategy for increasing racial diversity at the University of Michigan, the impact of the historic ruling is only beginning to be felt on college campuses around the nation.
While some universities—including Connecticut, North Carolina, and Texas A&M—have seen a surge in minority enrollment for the 2004–05 school year, the number of minority-student applications actually decreased slightly at the University of Michigan during the past 12 months.
“Our minority enrollment will be about 13 percent lower in this [2004] freshman class compared to the year before, and the Supreme Court decision probably contributed somewhat to the decrease,” says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs at Michigan. “There’s no doubt that the media attention we received during the five-year case tended to have a ‘chilling effect’ on some minority applicants, who may have decided that they didn’t want to come to a campus where they might be perceived as having been admitted because of their minority status rather than on the basis of merit.
Monts also points to other factors that might be responsible for the decline. “For one thing, our overall applications for this year’s freshman class were down by about 18 percent,” he says. “Because of the timing of the Supreme Court decision, we were required to quickly revise our applications procedure last summer [in 2003]. As a result, we ran about a month late in getting our applications out, which may have also contributed to the decline.” However, Monts says, the overall quality of applicants was greater than in past years and the university will admit nearly 6,000 new freshmen this fall, the largest class in the school’s history.
Another “chilling effect” during the past year, says Monts, emerged from the specific requirements of the Supreme Court ruling, which prohibited the university from assigning specific “admissions points” based on race. Instead of awarding points, Michigan administrators asked all applicants to write essays describing what their diverse talents, experiences, opinions, and cultural backgrounds would bring to the campus.
Explains Monts: “Unlike the standard essays that can accompany any college application, our applicants were instructed to write essays for Michigan that addressed a specific set of questions, and that requirement probably discouraged some of them from applying here.”
Like Monts, who’s convinced that the slight dip in enrollments at Michigan represents only a “momentary blip on the radar screen,” most of the participants in the landmark Supreme Court case believe the decision will have a positive effect on diversity in higher education long into the future.
“I expect the University of Michigan to be just as diverse as it was before,” says Curt Levey, the former legal director of the Center for Individual Rights, who orchestrated the case against affirmative action in opposition to the University of Michigan. “But in the future [after the decision], it’s going to have to achieve that in a way that doesn’t automatically give you points for your skin color.”
Elise Boddie, director of education for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which had filed a separate petition in the affirmative action suit, describes the ruling as a “major victory” for advocates of affirmative action in higher education but warns that the battle for racial diversity on campus was far from won.
“The struggle for racial equality will be with us for some time,” said Boddie. “Unfortunately for all of us, race still matters in higher education.”
—T.N.
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