All posts by Dr. Carlos E. Cortés

ADR ADVISOR Carlos E. Cortés is a retired history professor who has been a diversity speaker, educator, trainer, and consultant for forty-five years. His books include: The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity (2000); his memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time (2012); and a book of poetry, Fourth Quarter: Reflections of a Cranky Old Man (2016), which received honorable mention for the best book of poetry in the 2017 International Latino Book Awards. He also edited the four-volume Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia (2013).
Advisors, Authors A-H, Books

Renewing Diversity  Part 16: Revisting The Children Are Watching – by Carlos Cortés

It’s hard for me to get my head around the fact that it’s been more than a quarter century since the year 2000 publication of my book, The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity.  In that book I proposed a framework for looking at the mass media as a sprawling, multifaceted informal educational curriculum that competes with schools in the teaching process.  Whether or not media makers think of themselves as teachers is irrelevant.  Once they create media, their products become sources from which people learn.  

As the title suggests, the book focused on the theme of diversity.  I argued that the mass media provide a form of informal public multicultural education through the ways they depict groups, portray intergroup interactions, and publicly examine how  institutions and organizations interact with diversity.   Continue reading Renewing Diversity  Part 16: Revisting The Children Are Watching – by Carlos Cortés →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

Renewing Diversity: Part 15: Perspectives from Intercultural Pioneers – by Carlos Cortés

In August, 2023, two of my friends — Sandra Fowler and Daniel Yalowitz — set out to make a difference.  They envisioned a book on the field of interculturalism structured around individual professional autobiographies written by twelve people, mostly in their eighties, whom they deemed to be intercultural pioneers .  I was one of the dozen selected, also the oldest at 91 when the book — Creating the Intercultural Field: Legacies from the Pioneers — was published in 2025.

Within diversityworld, the field of interculturalism is not all that prominent.  It isn’t a widely-trumpeted diversity term like microaggressions or white fragility or critical race theory.   It doesn’t make headlines like DEI.  In fact, although its origins date back to the early twentieth century, interculturalism has operated effectively in the shadows without the widespread public recognition of hotter and more critically scrutinized fields like ethnic studies.

Continue reading Renewing Diversity: Part 15: Perspectives from Intercultural Pioneers – by Carlos Cortés →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Gender, Race & Ethnicity, Religious Diversity

Renewing Diversity #13: Diversity History as a Foreign Country – by Carlos Cortés

In his mesmerizing novel, The Go-Between, L. P. Hartley wrote one of the finest opening lines of any novel I have ever read:  “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

That certainly holds true for the historical trajectory of diversity.  At age 91, I’ve lived through myriad changes in the American diversity landscape.  As we wrestle with ongoing, inevitable challenges faced by the diversity movement, it behooves us to thoughtfully consider our past trajectory.  Yet to actually learn from that trajectory, we need to recognize how our presentist lenses can distort the very past that we are trying to understand.

Continue reading Renewing Diversity #13: Diversity History as a Foreign Country – by Carlos Cortés →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Inclusion, Tech & AI, Trends 2026

Renewing Diversity Part 12:  Diversity and the AI Frenzy – by Carlos Cortés

During 2025 few trends, if any, received more attention than developments in artificial intelligence.  You can hardly pick up a magazine or listen to a newscast without hearing something about AI.  However, I have encountered relatively little addressing the intersection of AI and diversity. 

What might AI mean for diversity?  What can diversity advocates do to address the implications of AI?  Questions range from the ethical to the practical.  In this column I will focus on one question: what are some of the diversity implications arising from the creation of AI databases and the resulting “information” that they supply when prompted?

Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 12:  Diversity and the AI Frenzy – by Carlos Cortés →

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Renewing Diversity Part 11: The Mysterious World of Diversity and Economics – by Carlos Cortés

I’ve always been a bit perplexed when it comes to the intersection of economics and diversity.  Maybe this is inevitable because of the sprawling, multifaceted, and contentious nature of the field of economics itself.  As the old saying goes, “You can stack all of the world’s economists end to end and never reach a conclusion.”

So rather than belaboring you with false certainties and pat generalizations about the economics-diversity nexus, I’ll tell you a story.  It’s a story about one acquaintance and two friends, each of whom contributed to my still-developing thinking about this topic.  Here goes.

Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 11: The Mysterious World of Diversity and Economics – by Carlos Cortés →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Gender

Renewing Diversity Part 10: Unpacking the Inclusivity Dilemma in Health Care – by Carlos Cortés

I recently received an invitation to attend the national conference of the Society for Intercultural Education, Teaching, and Research.   The conference theme was “Inclusive Interculturalism.” The implicit message was simple: in order to be inclusive, interculturalists need to make a conscious effort .  Inclusivity doesn’t come naturally.

In my last month’s ADR column I addressed a similar issue about the development of multicultural education. I argued that multiculturalists need to be cognizant about whom they may be excluding as well as including. The more that you exclude categories of people, the less inclusive the curriculum becomes. 

Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 10: Unpacking the Inclusivity Dilemma in Health Care – by Carlos Cortés →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Education, Inclusion

Renewing Diversity Part 9: Rediscovering My Professional Journey – by Carlos Cortés

For nearly a year I’ve been going through an out-of-body experience. It was launched by a simple request that has turned into a not-so-simple journey.  Here’s what happened.

In the fall of 2024, Steven Mandeville-Gamble, Director of the University of California, Riverside, Library, asked me to donate my professional papers to the library’s Special Collections.  Feeling quite honored, I agreed.  Since then I have been preparing my papers for delivery.  This has involved months of wading through file cabinets, bookcases, and stacks of boxes crammed with books, articles, correspondence, course notes, past public lectures, workshop outlines, video and audio tapes, and published and unpublished manuscripts. 

Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 9: Rediscovering My Professional Journey – by Carlos Cortés →

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Renewing Diversity No. 8: Updating the Classics – by Carlos Cortés 

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To a great extent, popular culture is a series of remakes.  Remakes of classical theatre.  Remakes of children’s stories.  Remakes of old movies.

There’s nothing basically wrong with that.  Hamlet has been restaged thousands of times, sometimes preserving its original historical context, other times being modernized.  Film director Akira Kurosawa transported “Macbeth” and “King Lear” into Japanese historical reimagining with stunning effect in “Throne of Blood” and “Ran.”  Director John Sturges reciprocated when he repurposed Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” as a rollicking American western, “The Magnificent Seven.” 

But each remake occurs at a specific moment.  Times change and, with those changes, we get altered views of both the originals and the remakes.  Changing views of diversity have deeply influenced that process.

Continue reading Renewing Diversity No. 8: Updating the Classics – by Carlos Cortés  →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Generational, Religious Diversity

Renewing Diversity No. 7: A Sliver of Bone – by Carlos Cortés 

“Do you have any religious or ethical reservations about what kind of bone we put in your mouth?”  That question both startled and pleased me.  As I answered with a simple “no,” I broke into a broad smile.

Some context.  My young periodondist was in the midst of trying to save my 90-year-old mouthful of teeth from the ravages of aging.  To do so she was giving them a thorough laser treatment and selectively rebuilding my dental structure through new bone.   

Continue reading Renewing Diversity No. 7: A Sliver of Bone – by Carlos Cortés  →

Advisors, Authors A-H, Gender, Sports

Renewing Diversity #6: Trans Talk – by Carlos Cortés 

“Can we finally stop talking about trans sports?” read the headline in the February 11, 2025, Los Angeles Times.  Of course this was followed by a column talking about — you guessed it — trans sports.  So the answer is no, we have to keep talking about trans sports for the same reason that people keep climbing mountains: because they are there.

 Four years ago I ended my ADR column on trans sports by positing that “the case of transgender female athletes may pose one of the ultimate tests for diversity advocates because it requires the difficult weighing of competing legitimate equity concerns, with no simple win-win solution in sight.”  I illustrated that conclusion by positing two hypothetical situations.   

Continue reading Renewing Diversity #6: Trans Talk – by Carlos Cortés  →