At least that’s where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton professor, Cornel West, and a famous right-wing Princeton professor, Robert George, to have a debate. The two men are friends, and by all accounts they had an utterly civil exchange of ideas. But that only made the whole thing even more outrageous.
“What really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion,” Ching told the Daily Gazette, the school’s newspaper. “I don’t think we should be tolerating [George’s] conservative views because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society.”
Over at Harvard, another young lady has similar views. Harvard Crimson editorial writer Sandra Y.L. Korn recently called for getting rid of academic freedom in favor of something called “academic justice.”
“If our university community opposes racism, sexism and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of ‘academic freedom’?” Korn asks.
Helpfully, she answers her own question: “When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.”
One could easily dismiss these students as part of that long and glorious American tradition of smart young people saying stupid things.
But we all know that this nonsense didn’t spring ex nihilo from their imaginations. These ideas are taught.
Indeed, we are now up to our knees in this Orwellian bilge. Diversity means conformity.
Let me invoke personal privilege by citing a slightly dated example. When the Los Angeles Times picked me up as a columnist in 2005, Barbra Streisand publicly canceled her subscription in protest (I’m proud to say). Streisand’s friend, iconic left-wing columnist Robert Scheer, had been let go. And I was one of the new columnists brought on board. This was an outrage.
“The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity, but demands it,” Streisand wrote to the Times. “Your publisher’s decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community. … So although the number of contributors to your op-ed pages may have increased, in firing Robert Sheer [sic] and putting Jonah Goldberg in his place, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted. …”
Nearly a decade later, I still don’t know what it means to dilute a gamut of voices. But I do know what she meant by “diversity.” It means: “people who agree with me.” By the normal metrics of identity politics — race, religion, gender — Scheer and I are largely interchangeable. Where we differ is ideology.
Which brings us back to the sages of Swarthmore and Harvard. They at least understand that ideological diversity is actually, like, you know, a thing. They just think it’s a bad thing.
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