A Lesson in Diversity : Education: As Pepperdine University sheds its all-white image, students begin to learn how to live together in a multicultural world.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, Adam Housley was able to tap an authoritative source of information to supplement what he was seeing on the TV news: His Kuwaiti roommate at Pepperdine University, who had just escaped his homeland, helped close the gap between the cultures and explain what happened.

After Pepperdine international students stood atop the Berlin Wall as it began to crumble, they returned with eyewitness accounts of history unfolding.

And when Malcolm X’s oldest daughter spoke at a Los Angeles-area college a few weeks ago, she appeared not in South Los Angeles, but at Pepperdine, in the heart of wealthy Malibu.

Contrary to popular perceptions about Pepperdine, there was nothing unusual about these events. Pepperdine students are not, in reality, all white, wealthy, conservative Christians with surfboards. And increasingly, the students--and the university--are taking steps to embrace the diversity that exists in the world around them.

“It’s a different world than what I grew up with in Kansas in the ‘50s,” Pepperdine President David Davenport said. Part of the mission of a liberal arts school, he said, should be to “help prepare students for the kind of world they’re going to live in.”

In recent years, that different world has begun to be reflected on the Malibu campus. Five years ago, all but 11% of the students were Anglos. Now, thanks to an aggressive recruitment and financial aid program, the percentage of minority and foreign students has risen to 26%.

Two recent grants--$1 million from National Medical Enterprises to provide mentoring programs and scholarships, and $500,000 from the Irvine Foundation for faculty recruitment--have helped the school position itself to attract more minorities.

Part of the National Medical Enterprises grant went toward setting up a Cultural Enrichment Center last year. The center coordinates mentoring activities, student recruitment, faculty development and scholarships, with an emphasis on underrepresented minorities.

The center also functions as an informal gathering place for many minority students.

Coordinator Trevin Hartwell, who graduated from Pepperdine last year, said some students experience culture shock when they arrive on campus because it is not like the environment in which they grew up. While social contacts with other minority students through the Cultural Enrichment Center can help students adjust, Hartwell said he believes the university needs to push still harder for diversity.

“I think it’s unacceptable for a university with the recognition and academic reputation that Pepperdine has (to be) in the middle of Los Angeles (and not have) the diversity of Los Angeles,” he said. “When you are seeking a higher education, I think you should be exposed to many different cultures, many different ethnicities, opinions, theories, religions. That’s what a liberal arts education is all about.”

Founded in Los Angeles in 1937 by George Pepperdine, owner of the Western Auto Supply Co., Pepperdine is a private university affiliated with the Church of Christ. The school moved in 1972 to its 830-acre hillside campus in Malibu.

The view from the hillside, looking out over Santa Monica Bay with Los Angeles in the distance, is not lost on John Wilson, dean of the undergraduate Seaver College.

“We can’t sit on a hill and look down on the city and observe what’s going on (without) stirring our own motivation,” he said. “There’s a strong element in the Christian religion that will not allow people who have benefited and are well-off to build fences around ourselves. . . . Religion is not about crosses on hills, it’s about helping people.”

Wilson said an important goal of the university in the next few years is to increase the diversity of the curriculum.

Undergraduates are now required to take one non-Western and two Western heritage courses. Wilson said the university is seeking to increase the variety of course offerings and is also trying to recruit more minority faculty members.

Perhaps more important, he said, is an effort, financed in part by the Irvine Foundation grant, to introduce greater diversity into the core courses--the ones that all students are required to take.

The path toward diversity has not always been smooth, however, as was illustrated by an incident that took place earlier this fall in Prof. James Taylor’s popular course, “African Political Thought.”

A white student in the class wrote an essay entitled “Nigger Stop Complaining.” The essay, read aloud, generated a heated discussion that ended without resolution because the class ended.

Not long afterward, the writer of the essay was assaulted on campus by a group that included an African-American student from the class and some of her friends who were not students. The writer was not seriously injured. Graffiti referring to the essay also appeared on campus.

The Black Student Union sponsored a forum to address feelings on campus, and the discussion seemed to help resolve the incident.

Housley, vice president of the Student Government Assn. and a student in Taylor’s class, said he, like many students, found the essay offensive, but not grounds for assault.

“If no one did anything to the guy, it would have been better,” Housley said.

The assault is under investigation by the school’s Department of Public Safety.

The essay and the assault were still very much on people’s minds a few weeks later when Malcolm X’s daughter, Attallah Shabazz, spoke on campus at the invitation of Hartwell of the Cultural Enrichment Center.

Speaking Nov. 30 before a capacity audience at Smothers Theatre on campus, Shabazz was asked about the essay incident. She replied that the essay and the assault were equally despicable. She also emphasized that people must learn to live together.

It was a message Pepperdine students are beginning to understand.