A correction was added to this letter March 24.

Because of an editing error, the March 23 letter “Diversity education is a tool for success,” incorrectly referred to the U.S. Latino/a Studies program as a department. The program is not a department because it does not grant degrees. The Daily regrets this error.

Noah Stahl’s column on our ethnic studies program, (“Diversity education creates division, not understanding,” March 22) illustrates many misperceptions of the purpose of this program.

U.S. Latino/a Studies, the department I direct, is premised on the idea that a good education should provide students with the information and tools needed to be successful in a nation where a growing Latino population, now numbering some 40 million persons, is a fact of life.

For example, students interested in business should learn how to market to a group whose disposable income was estimated to be $652 billion in 2003, according to BusinessWeek. If you are contemplating a career in health care, it is in your best interest to learn more about the diverse health practices you may encounter when treating Latino/a patients.

If interested in law enforcement, it benefits you to learn that many law enforcement departments look for officers who know how to relate to growing numbers of Latinos in large cities and small towns. Students interested in entering politics should know how Latinos will increasingly influence national and local elections.

Mr. Stahl’s suggestion that, instead of ethnic studies, we should substitute something he calls “human studies” apparently overlooks our department of anthropology (anthropology being the study of human beings as a species).

What we learn from anthropology is that human beings group themselves in diverse ways, including by language, color, spatial boundaries and religion. Grouping is a fact of life, even as we may wish to transcend all group consciousness. In his own column, Mr. Stahl groups himself (or his editors do) as a “graduate student” or an “Iowa State Daily columnist.”

And it is ironic that Mr. Stahl would use Isaac Newton as part of his argument against a multicultural education. The more we learn about Newton, the more we can see how his own self-identification with anti-Catholicism and anti-Trinitarianism influenced his life and work. Newton’s feud with Gottfried W. von Leibniz, the German mathematician, is replete with nationalistic and ethnic undertones. Many of these little-known aspects of Newton’s work are chronicled by, among other scholars, B. J. Dobbs in “The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought.”

In a world where multiculturalism is a fact of life, we need more multicultural education, not less. And perhaps an interesting course to add to our diversity curriculum is one on the effects of group (or ethnic) consciousness on the life and work of great scientists.

Hector Avalos

Director

U.S. Latino/a Studies