To the Editor:

Re: “Glancing Back, Looking Forward — Toward Diversity,” Opinion, April 20.

President Skorton expresses a strong desire to improve the climate of inclusiveness at Cornell as a living community, workplace and intellectual environment. While he did not mention this specifically, we suggest that the diversity of and respect for different religious and spiritual disciplines ought to be a core value of the University. To be a world leader, we need to live with the awkwardness these issues pose. One of our leading chemistry faculty and Nobel Laureate, Roald Hoffmann, has eloquently described, “That science and religion are compartmentalized in our minds, or destined to be at war, are both impoverishing views. They coexist, sometimes uneasily, in most thinking and feeling minds.”

Six religious traditions account for over 75 percent of the world’s people. Non-religious and atheistic persons account for about 15 percent and the remaining 10 percent of the world’s population participate in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct practices. Progressive, moderate and conservative followers of all of these secular and religious traditions are becoming more strongly defined in matters of intellectual and personal discipline. They expect more from their specific communities (professional, secular or religious), as well as more consideration of their needs and ideas from others in the wider community, the workplace and in the marketplace. These changes raise issues of equity and meaning in new ways. As a result, new intellectual issues are emerging in nearly all fields of academic study.

This summer and fall, a group of us will gather to explore how such openness might change Cornell, perhaps awkwardly initially, but for the better. Three areas of impact seem worth noting: the openness of Cornell as a community, a workplace and as a center of intellectual rigor. If you are interested, please contact us at wec3@cornell.edu.

Eric Clay ’81, ’02

Prof. Joe Regenstein ’65, ’66, food science, Head of Cornell Kosher and Halal Food Initiative

Mossaad Abdel-Ghany, retired senior research associate

Prof. Gary Bergstrom, plant pathology and plant-microbe biology

Prof. Gary W. Fick, crop and soil sciences