If you’ve lived in a diverse apartment building, do you truly believe that all groups/races/religions are equally likely to be quiet, civic-minded, law-abiding, respectful of others, reliable with their rent checks, have the same attitude towards trash, recycling and maintaining of public areas, drive similar cars, and throw the same kind of parties (with accompanying externalities)?
If I were a landlord for an apartment building, I might rather rent to female north-east Asians (meaning of Japanese, Chinese or Korean origins) than about anyone else because they are so quiet, responsible, polite, credit-worthy, etc. If peace and quiet were my prime concerns, I might rather rent to Asians than Jews. If my own group were my primary concern, I’d rent to Orthodox Jews. Diversity has some advantages (it is socially cool) but so does homogeneity (it develops social capital).
It was not the kind of message a Harvard seminar expects to hear. Ethnic diversity causes a lot of problems, our guest speaker told us. It reduces interpersonal trust, civic engagement, and charitable giving. It causes us to disengage from society, like turtles shrinking into their shells, reducing our overall quality of life. The more diversity we experience in our lives, the less happy we are.
I came to Harvard to study public policy in the fall of 2004. All of the first-years like me had to take a special seminar class where we would discuss the philosophy of science and the nature of good research. The best class days featured established scholars who would come to present their own papers, which were real-life examples of good research.
The guest speaker who came to discuss diversity was political scientist Robert Putnam, who is something of a celebrity in academic circles. With the publication of his 1995 article “Bowling Alone,” Putnam helped bring the issues of social trust and civic participation to the forefront of social science. His article became a popular book, also called Bowling Alone, in 2000. Written for a general audience, the book chronicled the rapid decline in civic engagement that had taken place in the United States since 1950, and argued that communities without strong social ties are less happy and less successful. The article and the book garnered Putnam numerous media appearances and spawned reams of response articles in academia.
