Research on cognitive bias explains how our brains are prone to stumble, overlooking key points of data. This article discusses how this phenomenon can help us understand why we often stumble in assessing the state of campus race relations, overlooking ways that White students self-segregate. In contrast, students of color have high rates of…

Given the critical significance of empirical studies of diversity, it is important for researchers and assessment practitioners to gain insight into how students are interpreting and answering survey items that have noteworthy implications for policy and practice. To examine how students make meaning of survey items related to diversity, we…

Higher education researchers and practitioners have emphasized the educational benefits of fostering meaningful interracial interaction on college campuses. The link between cross-racial interaction and student growth has received considerable empirical attention, but far less is known about whether and when interracial friendship predicts student…

Using structural equation modeling, this study examined the effects of peer environments on collegiate interracial friendship and how such effects vary by students' race. The results show that the peer environment of Greek life mediated the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship in college, in that students…

Few qualitative studies consider how high school experiences affect readiness for diversity engagement in college. Using data from an ethnographic case study, three central trends (student experiences within homogeneous high schools, racial divisions within diverse high schools, and students who attended diverse high schools but had little…

Racial/cultural awareness workshops constitute a salient form of co-curricular diversity engagement in higher education. Although these workshops are generally quite short in duration (often no more than two hours), previous research suggests that workshop participation is associated with undergraduate civic growth. The current study uses…

This article considers whether the socioeconomic diversity of the undergraduate student body and experiences with cross-class interaction (CCI) are significantly related to cross-racial interaction (CRI) and engagement with curricular/co-curricular diversity (CCD) activities. Individual students who reported higher levels of CCI had significantly…

This article examines how peer interactions in college organizations (Greek, ethnic, and religious) affect interracial friendships, including whether peer interaction in student organizations mediates the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship. Involvement in ethnic student organizations was non-significant;…

Research on diversity in higher education has evolved to consider the nature of interracial contact and campus climate as well as the factors that may foster meaningful interactions. While some studies have explored predictors of cross-racial interaction (CRI) and interracial friendship (IRF), it remains unclear whether and how the same precollege…

This study examines how multiple facets of students' identities affect their experiences with cross-racial interaction. I consider how the intersection between two identity categories--race and religion--affected six Black students' experiences with cross-racial interaction in a multiracial religious student organization. While the pursuit of…

This study analyzes data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen (NLSF) to examine whether religious affiliation and involvement are related to the outcome of interracial friendship in the fourth year of college. When controlling for students' demographic characteristics, institutional characteristics, and previous levels of interracial…

Religion is the most segregated arena of American life, but its effect on collegiate diversity outcomes has been overlooked, despite the significance of both race and religion in many students' lives. This study examines whether religious observance, religious worldview identification, and participation in a religious student organization are…

This ethnographic account highlights four Korean American students deciding between participating in a racially diverse campus fellowship versus an ethnically homogeneous group. Despite religious convictions about the importance of diversity, students experienced tensions between their ideals concerning diversity and the difficulty of actually…

A key argument for affirmative action is that college students benefit from engagement in a racially diverse student body. Because many students have few meaningful experiences with diversity prior to college, exposure to divergent viewpoints and perspectives is an essential part of spurring student growth and development. Engagement with…

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Freshmen to examine the racial/ ethnic composition of student organizations as well as the relationship between student organization participation and close interracial friendship. White students were the most likely to be in majority White environments in fraternities and sororities,…