In the post-Soviet world, the fundamental issue of peoples and nations has risen again and again. For millions of people, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant freedom from a regime that had killed or oppressed their loved ones. For others, it meant the ability to associate and interact freely with people throughout the globe. For even more, it meant the chance to claim ethnic identities long suppressed by the all encompassing label of state communism. This phenomenon, of peoples flexing their political and cultural voices for the first time, has remained a defining feature of the modern world. For better or worse remains to be seen.

Resolved, that racial diversity in the classroom is essential to a good education.

Since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, racial diversity and integration has been a hallmark issue of the US education system.  The decision officially outlawed “mandatory racial segregation”in public schools.  Since then, US school systems have used busing rezoning, and what some consider “reverse discrimination” to ensure that US schools are as racially integrated as possible.  According to research, this approach has largely been effective.  In the years since 1954, racial diversity in southern schools skyrocketed.  However, in recent decades numbers show that this trend is slowly reversing:  for example, today’s average white student attends a school with less than 23% of students coming from non-white ethnic groups. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (2007), has rekindled the debate over government imposed racial diversity programs by deciding that race should not be used as criteria for admitting students to public high schools.  This resolution asks us to evaluate the goal behind these numbers.  Is racial diversity essential for a good education?