'It's Not Rocket Science--It's Much Harder': Racial & Ethnic Diversity in Public Service--Where Do We Go from Here? An AED Public Service Leadership Paper

For people concerned with the future of diversity in the United States, the month of June 2003 was a momentous watershed. Nearly four decades earlier, President Lyndon B. Johnson first advocated affirmative action as a means to "seek not just freedom, but opportunity." June 2003 also saw the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke," permitting race to be used as one criterion for admitting a diverse student body in higher education. It was likewise the eve of the seventh anniversary of the refusal of the Supreme Court to review the "Hopwood v. Texas" ruling by the Fifth District U.S. Court of Appeals, questioning educational diversity as a compelling state interest. Most urgently, the Supreme Court was preparing to issue a ruling on two University of Michigan admissions cases in "Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al." and "Grutter v. Bollinger et al.," addressing whether diversity might be used as a factor for evaluating applicants. It was in this setting that over 50 executives from the public and nongovernmental sectors met on June 3, 2003, in the first Public Service Leadership Symposium organized by AED's Center for Leadership Development. The Ford Foundation-funded Symposium addressed the key issue of "Creating the Environment for Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Public Service Workplace--A Challenge to Senior Leadership." The occasion also marked the publication of a timely report published by AED, "Toward Diversity in Public Service." Also funded by the Ford Foundation, this report chronicled the impact of the Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellowship Program, an initiative over twenty years old designed to bring diversity to public service by enabling U.S. students of color to gain experience in the public service professions and receive financial support for master's degrees in public policy and international affairs.