Religion's Place at the Campus Diversity Table

“My job is to keep close to the data and stay responsible to the research,” observes Mayhew, who refrains from drawing too many conclusions from the first wave of 2015 statistics. Still, he frames the latest findings as proof that pluralism—the extent to which students are accepting of others with different worldviews and are willing to find common values and build relationships while remaining true to their own paradigm—remains a high priority for incoming freshmen. A substantial majority of students surveyed, 71%, rated opportunities to get to know students of diverse religious and nonreligious perspective as very important, and expressed interest in participating in service with and learning about and from those with diverse religious perspectives. But according to Mayhew, university outreach fixated on the race-gender-sexual orientation triumvirate of diversity tends to ignore worldview diversification altogether.