Thoughts from KSA

As a kid growing up in Alpena, Michigan, diverse meant some notion of "a range of different things".  A couple of examples might be that there wasn't much diversity in things to do for entertainment in Alpena or that  I might have a teacher describe a genus being studied in biology class as diverse.  Now Alpena is a small town on Lake Huron in the northeast section of the lower peninsula of Michigan.  I don't think anyone ever considered applying the term to the population.  There were Poles, Germans, English......a fairly standard mix of caucasian folks and that was about it.  People went to work, went to school, shopped, went to the corner bar, went to church and some had an accent.  Still, just people from different places.  No big deal.

As I grew older, however, I traveled away from Alpena.  I went to college in Kalamazoo, took a job there, took a job in New York,  traveled to various places, and took a job in the Detroit area.  I'm not sure how but over the intervening years, the term diversity took on entirely new and significant connotations.  In the first place, it was supposed to be a good thing.  By inference its lack was a bad thing.  Schools, companies, states, and even nations adopted the term.  And what a term it has become!  It still means a range of different things but now when you think of diversity, the default topic of discussion is people; by nationality, by race, by color, by language, by ethnicity, by sex, by sexual orientation and everything else that makes one person different from another.   Many people in the US and elsewhere embrace diversity while others abhor it.  Wow!  "Diversity" is loaded!  I thought I had a handle on it but, as it turns out, I still thought too narrowly.  To me, in the good old US of A, it meant people that were different from me.  My sheltered world provided an egocentric perspective. The Kingdom has been a revelation.

It turns out that I, too,  represent diversity!  All this time I thought diversity meant I could look around and see some people different than myself with whom I spoke and worked and socialized.  It's finally dawned on me just how big that word really is.  I'm sure most of you already know this but it's sunk in to me just how omni-directional diversity really is.  One fact that has struck me here in Saudi Arabia is first, how many ways there are to pronounce the English language and, second, the fact that I'm hearing how many ways there are to pronounce the English language.  I am having difficulty training my ear to recognize my own native language as spoken by Brits, Aussies, Scots, Lebanese, Czechs, Pakistanis, Saudis, Indians, Thais and others.....  But isn't it amazing that all those people speak at least some English... (Not too much credit to the Brits, here.  They did speak it first :-) )  One thing all these diverse peoples need is a common way to communicate and English is it at KAUST.  Nonetheless, KAUST is a culturally diverse community.  But hold on......just the other day a Vice-President of the University addressed the entire Information Technology staff.  One of his concerns was that he did not see enough women and Saudis represented.  So perhaps KAUST has at once overreached its diversity targets and failed to reach them completely.

All I know is that, as an English speaking American, I am a tiny minority here.  It's humbling and enlightening at the same time.  It's a good place to be.