David Oppenheimer is a clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law, director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and faculty co-director of the pro bono program. He is the author of ten books on civil rights and discrimination law, including the first law school casebook in comparative equality law.

The Diversity Principle (Yale University Press, 2026), the work of a diversity skeptic turned admirer, chronicles how diversity became a foundational value of higher education over the last two hundred years, how it evolved as it was adopted in commerce and science, and the implications of the current backlash.

The diversity principle–the idea that people with different backgrounds, experiences, identities, and viewpoints produce better work by engaging with one another–was a core tenet of the first modern research university, founded in Germany in 1810. It was the inspiration for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, a touchstone of academic freedom; a hallmark of Charles Eliot’s remaking of Harvard in the late nineteenth century to promote the “clash of ideas”; and a foundation of the twentieth century efforts toward equality of Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Pauli Murray. In telling the story of the diversity principle through the experiences of these and other remarkable thinkers, Oppenheimer argues for affirming diversity as a central value of education and an essential ingredient for a robust intellectual and political culture.

Sue Schechter, Berkeley Law Field Placement Coordinator, and a Glen Park neighbor, moderates.