Special Double Issue Of CommonQuest Tackles Identity And Diversity On America's Campuses

American Jewish Committee
Thursday, 3 June 1999

CommonQuest: The Magazine of Black/Jewish Relations has released its first double issue -- "Mixing It Up" -- examining identity and diversity on America's campuses. This issue, one of the most ambitious and eclectic treatments of this subject ever to appear in one publication, brings together an extraordinarily diverse mix of contributing authors.

Dr. Stephen Steinlight, AJC Director of National Affairs and Senior Advisor of CommonQuest, said: "We are enormously pleased with this issue of CommonQuest. The day-to-day challenges, questions and choices regarding identity and diversity facing students on today's college campuses reflect the full range of responses in the wider society to the changing shape of American demography and culture. However, these issues frequently play out with special force and passion on our campuses, where students and scholars of all backgrounds come together and mix in ways that occur far less frequently in the more segregated 'real world.'

"College is also the setting," Dr. Steinlight added, "and the time in young people's lives where self-image and a larger sense of group identity are being forged, often with great self-consciousness and intense inward struggle. We hope the new double issue of the magazine will make a genuine contribution to the way members of the college community and the rest of us look at these existential and social questions."

AJC has already begun to plan follow-up conferences on the issue of diversity in higher education. A major conference will be held in the fall at Harvard University in partnership with the W.E.B. DuBois Institute. Another is being organized together with the University of Pittsburgh and in cooperation with other local colleges and universities.

The new 112-page issue includes contributions by eminent authors and public intellectuals representing a wide variety of cultural, social and political perspectives, such as Nathan Glazer, Nat Hentoff, Nelson George, Salim Muwakill, Ilan Stavans, Peter Steinfels, Catherine Stimpson, Mel Watkins and others, as well as lively and thoughtful student contributors.

Among the topics addressed: "Jewish Women in Search of Themselves," "renewing the Forest: Catholics in the Multicultural Mix," "The Faces of Asian America: A Photo Essay," and "Not From Here Nor From There," on the tensions between Chicano and Latino students. Articles range from vignettes and reminiscences to analytical essays on today's hot-button subjects such as the excess of political correctness, the varieties of Hip Hop culture, undergraduate obsession with South Park, critical race theory, affirmative action in higher education, and white students' affectations of black culture.

CommonQuest, published by the American Jewish Committee and Howard University, can be found in the libraries of hundreds of colleges and universities across America and is frequently adopted for course use in classes in a variety of majors and programs. It has been widely praised. For example, Clarence Page, syndicated columnist, author and commentator, said: "If you need to pick one magazine to take you into the next century, this is it."

This special double issue of CommonQuest was published with generous funding from The Ford Foundation and The W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

CommonQuest focuses on issues within and relations between the African-American and Jewish communities, as it explores the wider context of race, identity and pluralism in America.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org