"Even on campus, where the modern diversity doctrine was fashioned, Berrey found that the doctrine itself was hard to define."

"The prevailing wisdom seemed to be that 'racial minorities' were 'culturally distinct from but culturally equivalent to white people.' (The cultural differences were considered real enough to make diversity valuable but not real enough to explain, say, disparities in academic achievement.) At one point, Michigan’s admissions-office Web site pictured a welter of enthusiastic believers, including a student who declared, 'Diversity is one of the issues I’m most passionate about.” In a book called 'The Diversity Bargain,' another scholar, Natasha K. Warikoo, concludes that students at Harvard have fully internalized the logic of diversity as an engine of mutual profit. 'Interaction with peers of color is a resource some white students feel entitled to—or sometimes wrongly deprived of,' she writes. 'To many white students, minority students do not hold up their end of the diversity bargain when they join the Black Students Association or sit together in the cafeteria.'"

From "The Limits of 'Diversity'/Where affirmative action was about compensatory justice, diversity is meant to be a shared benefit. But does the rationale carry weight?" by Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker.