In April 2008, NYC Human Rights Commissioner/Chair Patricia L. Gatling led a discussion entitled “E Pluribus Unum: Reconciling Diversity and Community in the 21st Century” at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The event was the Commission’s third in a series of Civil Rights Public Lectures and featured Dr. Robert D. Putnam, best-selling author of Bowling Alone, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, and Visiting Professor and Director of the Manchester Graduate Summer Program in Social Change, University of Manchester (UK).

Dr. Putnam described how changing populations and ethnic diversity continually shape trust, identities, social ties and civic engagement. He said that while “increased immigration is a strong engine of economic growth and injects creativity and energy into receiving countries and communities, in the short-term, our discomfort with diversity challenges our community bonds and cohesion. But America’s history and motto ‘E Pluribus Unum’ shows that we can build a unity from this diversity. And with concerted attention of the sort that the NYC Human Rights Commission and others devote to these problems, we can accelerate our ability to find common ground between various communities and forge a wider, more inclusive American society.”

Also participating were Dr. Katherine Newman, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Rev. C. Vernon Mason, CEO of the Fund for Community Leadership Development and CEO of Uth Turn; Richard E. Green, Chief Executive/President of the Crown Heights Youth Collective, Inc; Chung-Wha Hong, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition; and Rabbi Robert Kaplan, Director of CAUSE-NY, Jewish Community Relations Council.