these two principles exist in tension helps us understand why so
often excellence and diversity do not function as alternative criteria
of evaluation, but as additive, complementary factors—despite pop-
ular perceptions and rhetorical attacks against affirmative action and
other policies aimed at promoting diversity within higher education.
Like excellence, diversity appears to have become a moral imperative
of the system—another manifestation of what is sacred in American
academia.^50
238 / Considering Interdisciplinarity and Diversity