The Volokh Conspiracy’s Todd Zywicki raises all the appropriate questions with regard to Columbia University’s odious $15 Million Diversity Initiative, which, in typical academic “tolerance”-speak fashion, lauds itself for promoting a type of strident and homogenized “diversity” that is, in fact, antithetical to diversity in anything but the most meaningless, cosmetic sense of the word—while in effect codifying a particular ideological stance. Because as anyone who’s ever worked in a university humanities department can tell you, positions that run counter to the status quo of affirmative action or gender feminism, to cite just two examples, are considered de facto attacks on a university’s commitment to “diversity” (which, let’s face it, is simply code for a commitment to the progressive agenda of advancing and reinforcing identity politics for the purposes of establishing ready-made political blocs). Note Zywicki:
One important effect of imposing this sort of ideological litmus test for hiring, is that it makes it increasing difficult to protect academic freedom from bad ideas such as David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights. The objection to the Academic Bill of Rights–an objection that I share–is that it improperly infringes on academic freedom. But if Columbia is going to override its academic freedom policy for these political purposes, then there seems to be no principled reason not to override academic freedom for the political purposes favored by David Horowitz and other advocates of the Academic Bill of Rights. What can Columbia say in response to Horowitz now?
Moreover, if Columbia is indeed imposing an ideological litmus test that excludes conservatives from consideration for these 15-20 positions, this is somewhat ironic to say the least. According to one study, Democrats already outnumber Republicans 14-to-1 at Columbia, and the study finds only 6 Republicans on the entire faculty and not a single Republican in the history, political science, and sociology departments. (For those who haven’t been following this issue, political party identification turns out to be a strong and easily-measurable proxy for ideological viewpoint–compare this study with this.) I also did a brief review of some of the science departments at Columbia, and although there are substantially more men than women faculty members in those departments, it appears that the imbalance is substantially less than 14-to-1. Moreover, women seem to be represented in much greater numbers at the more junior professor levels, suggesting that the imbalance is narrowing over time, unlike the ideological imbalance in the academy, which appears to be widening over time. Thus, the ironic result of Columbia’s ideologically-laden “diversity” initiative will almost certainly be to reduce the ideological diversity of the university and reinforce the prevailing orthodoxy. Nor is it responsive that there are an inadequate number of qualified candidates, as part of Columbia’s charge is to “strengthen the pipeline bringing women and minority students into the University’s undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral programs.”
While I don’t quite share Zywicki’s objections to the Horowitz Academic Bill of Rights (well, I share his ideological objections—as perhaps even Horowitz does—but from a pragmatic perspective, I find it difficult to imagine the university culture, a true monopoly, being brought to account without some sort of outside pressure, especially gven its nature as a self-perpetuating echo chamber at its most devious during faculty hiring sessions), I nevertheless find his conclusions spot on. Diversity, in its current academic incarnation, is in actuality an Orwellian check on intellectual diversity—and is in fact a form of soft totalitarianism in that it shores up a privileged ideology while simultaneously diversifying the look of that ideology’s supporters and demonizing critics as (ironically) “not committed to diversity,” as Peter Wood casually points out in his Diversity: The Invention of a Concept:
[…] in one area of American life after another, the principle of diversity represents an attempt to alter the root cultural assumptions on which American society is based. Even if the diversity movement fails to achieve a new constitutional order in the United States, it already has achieved a substantial record of increased social discord and cultural decline. The diversity movement has contributed significantly to falling educational performance and lower academic standards (e.g. attacks on the SAT as a tool for identifying high school students who have the aptitude to succeed in college); undermined love of country (by elevating racial separatism); trivialized art (by emphasizing the social identity of the artist, e.g. Toni Morrison); and made certain forms of racialism respectable again. This is not to say that diversity is always and everywhere detrimental to our legal, social, moral and personal well-being. To many, it is an attractive idea and, in the right circumstances, can be enlivening and uplifting. But that could also be said of Turner Movie Classics, and we are not tempted to turn our key legal judgments and the tenor of cultural life over to the custody of cable television.
Whatever its virtues, diversity is a challenge to higher virtues and greater goods. We jeopardize liberty and equality by our friendship with this new principle. It is an unruly guest in our house, and the time may have come to call a cab and send it home […]
[…] Diversity is an idea without a clear intellectual context. Its background is murky, and the language in which its proponents speak is often misleading.
Thus, to see diversity clearly we must always look more than once. Sometimes, within what looks like arrant prejudice, such as in Henry Davenport Northrop’s accounts of Indian Horrors, lurks a hint of real diversity. And sometimes the opposite is true: what proclaims itself as diversity turns out to be little more than prejudice. This book is concerned with both kinds of diversity: the real (and natural) diversity of our social life, and the movement that has appropriated the name of diversity, not to achieve a better kind of national unity, but to give license to ethnic privilege and other forms of separatism.
This separatist, privileging diversity is simultaneously a concept, a political orientation and a personal taste. It is, if not literally everywhere in contemporary American society, nearly so. We need, however, a name for its proponents. Sometimes these advocates of diversity are spoken of as “the multicultural Left†or simply “multiculturalists,†but these terms cover only part of the story. Diversilogues trade in the ideology of diversity; diversidacts teach it; diversicrats regulate it. Each of these words has its place in the story, but for the sake of having one term for the whole tribe, I will write of “diversiphiles†when I mean to speak generally of those who elevate the ideal of diversity above the ideal of national unity. Diversiphiles are a dominant voice in many precincts of American culture.
I write as an opponent of the diversity movement as a whole, but one whose opposition is rooted in disappointment. The concept of diversity draws on some profoundly important human realities that, call them what we will, ought to be central to any enlightened and humane view of humanity. But diversity in this sense is mangled, compromised and ultimately destroyed by diversity in the sense that has prevailed in the diversity movement.
America’s real diversity sometimes seems on the verge of disappearance, while a phony, impostor diversityâ€â€made up of spurious claims to separate cultural identities, fashion statements and fantasy vacationsâ€â€has taken its place.
And Columbia, it now seems, is willing to accelerate that disappearance—all in the name of political consolidation.
Hardly what one expects of a university, sure—but more the rule than the exception these days, I’m afraid…
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(h/t Terry Hastings)
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update: courtesy Rob Port, “Spanish Set to Become Official Language of Seven Denver Public Library Branches”.
More racial balkinization, more resistance to assimilation. All in the name of “diversity.” Christ.
The guilty flee when no man pursueth.
Or is that un-pc?
Another reminder of why I have made some career decisions recently.
OK, I read through that entire thing twice.
When are we going to talk more about Michelle Malkin’s breasts?
I actually tried to run a diversity initiative past the wife this weekend; you know, that the female presence in our household might benefit from a little bit of diversity. She replied, in true “Yin and yang of intimate interpersonal relationships post” fashion by temoving her tennis shoe and beating me about the head and neck with it.
On my last job application I had to self-identify as an Irish-American-Philadelpia Native- Hooserized-Roman Catholic-male (with gorgeous eyes). But I got the job anyway because the Jayhawk bastards couldn’t read. . .and I told them I voted for Pat Paulson. The reading, churching and voting made me a minority. I win!
*I actually tried to run a diversity initiative past the wife this weekend; you know, that the female presence in our household might benefit from a little bit of diversity.*
Yep, tried a similar tact- if anyone has any advice which might convince the significant other that diversity truly has merit (she’s a blonde so I’m thinking brunette or redhead), I’m mostly ears (obviously, I’m thinking with something else but other than that, all ears).
“Her”. Well, duh.
Ya gotta role-play. Here:
“I’ll be DiMaggio, you be Marylin…(knock,knock) Joan! What a suprise! . . .”
Ew, spam word = products as in “Time to wash the products off of the products Joan, now get the hell out.”
Jayhawk Bastards???
You’re on the list.
Help! I’m being opressed! You just hate me because I’m different.
I demand a seperate comment section for Hoosiers! How am I supposed to speak my mind with all of this threatening going on?
Of course, nobody in the Denver area would go to the new “spanish” library and ask for a book in english. And act like they don’t understand espanol. Yeah, right pal. Yo no se what ya call yer problemo…
SB: example
good or bad?
So, are we to assume the “Mexifornia” thing is spreading Eastward? Of course, here in Detroit, we can hear the Islamic call to prayers.
GO (Miami) REDSKINS!! I vowed to never cheer for the Red Hawks. Miami of Ohio lost it’s Indian tradition about – 8 years ago?
Fifteen million? Ha! Harvard’s flushing 50 million smackeroonies on diversity flummery, in penance for Larry Summers inadvertently telling the truth.
These sorts of stories depress me. I’m thankful that I got my undergraduate education before PC spread out from the prestige universities. But I am embarrassed and ashamed for Summers, to see a man of his accomplishments in his position, being reduced to a dancing bear by the diversity commissars.
It’s worth while to pull out Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, as the chapters on political correctness are as spot-on now as they were in the mid-Eighties.
Turing = month, as in All the offended feminists could too be as good at math and science as any old patriarchal man–so long as it isn’t that time of the month.
University education, thanks to the net, is going to become just as decenteralized as news and entertainment. As that happens universities are going to find it more and more difficult to stay afloat. Creating their own little segregated enclaves isn’t going to help them compete. If anything, it will hasten their demise. The sad thing is, they might not be missed when their gone.
One quick point, the problem with “diversity” at the University level is that it’s a disguise for various shades of leftism, from moderate big-government socialism to hard-core leftist marxism and outright Maoist communism.
That said, “diversity” in and of itself is not a bad thing, quite the opposite. Personally, when teaching I prefer a diverse group due to the wider range of skills, abilities, and life experiences students bring to the class. If a teacher is able to capitalize on these various strengths, diversity can be powerfully beneficial.
Just my .02
Dumbest. Statement. Ever.
My. Well a helpful critique, “Fiddy.”
Of course, it’s always easier to use. hackneyed. punctuation. in. lieu. of. a. point. than. to. actually. try. expressing. one—particulary when you are a dumb. fuck. Right?
The point of that statement, thanks for asking, is that, when it comes to making your way in the workforce nowadays, most employers require college even as a baseline for employment. That is, it’s become a virtual requirement. In that sense, it holds a monopoly as gateway to the workforce.
I didn’t need to ask – clearly you don’t have the slightest fucking clue what a monopoly (or a workable analogy) is. Here’s a hint: a monopoly is a single firm that controls a the means of producing a particular product. Another hint: there are over 600 4-year colleges in the United States. Nonetheless, in Goldsteinworld, these 600 institutions, all competing with each other for students, have somehow formed a monopoly. Alert the DOJ!
What. A. Dumbass.
Christ, are you fucking daft. The particular product is the prerequisite for employment. The “single firm” in the “university culture” is the curriculum itself (and here I’m talking about the humanities, predominantly), controlled overwhelmingly by a liberal/ progressivist social sensibility that seeks to exclude and demonize actual diversity of ideas in favor of a cosmetic diversity—one that lends credibility to claims that the university is fostering “diversity” when it is in fact fostering progressivist group think.
I’m sorry you can’t wrap your mind around the analogy—or that you’re the kind of nasty little punk who feels it appropriate to bust onto someone’s site and drop a string of juvenille ad hominems—but then, I’ve come to expect that from close-minded lefties so filled with hatred and disdain for anyone who dares question their shibboleths that they spend all of their time trying to twist arguments to fit their increasingly failing worldview.
I’ve argued at length in the last week or so with several on the left who were welcomed visitors to this site, and we managed to keep the debate civil. But I’m not interested in dealing with cocksuckers like you who feel entitled to step in here and piss on my floor.
So fuck off. Life’s too short to spend slathering ointment on a human Herpes sore like you.
Could someone get a fire extinguisher for Fiddy?
[…] Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg, having traversed the “diversity” canard as it is currently deployed, sums this up in a way protein wisdom regulars will find quite […]
[…] Nothing here that I and others haven’t been arguing for years; but it’s nice to have data — well, additional data — available to back up what it would seem are rather commonsense observations. […]