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.