The University of Arizona Daily Wildcat reports a weird but depressingly typical town hall meeting attended by Peter Likins, UA president, and about 50 or so committed diversiphiles. (Likens said “he would have considered the forum more successful if he had seen different faces.”) (Link thanks to Dave Huber)
The more I read of these diversity pep rallies, the more they begin to seem like revival meetings shouting praise of a new religion, with diversity evangelicals all but speaking in tongues as they come forward to share their faith and urge the conversion of the heathens. Listen in for a moment:
Likins spoke in unusually impassioned tones at the town hall to a group of about 50 students, faculty and staff, calling diversity a fundamental aspect of American society.
“We need to embed this in the core of our dialogue about ourselves,” he said.
….
Likins challenged those present to make others aware of the panel’s message: The world is becoming more diverse, and university community members need to adapt to the changing reality.
….
People who don’t make that attempt are contributing to “intellectual inbreeding,” in which faculty members simply hire more white males rather than actively seek out women and minorities, said Allison Vaillancourt, assistant vice president for human resources.
She called for attendees at the forum to share this message with diversity “non-believers” around the campus, saying that improving diversity is a fundamental requirement for creating a better academic climate.
“In order for us to be truly successful, we all have to buy into this notion that diversity is important to this community,” she said. “In many ways, we are marrying our cousins here.”
….
Faculty members also need to consider diversity as they go about their academic duties, said Richard Ruiz, professor of language, reading and culture.
That means more than considering broad perspectives when assigning reading and giving lectures.
It means embedding diversity in core beliefs and acting out those beliefs, he said.
Suffusing the meeting was the urgent need for conversion, since all the panelists agreed “that creating a culture accepting of diversity requires a campus wide buy-in.”
This constant stress on the need for conversion suggests an irony lurking just beneath the surface of the new religion of diversity. Indeed, if I were more sympathetic than I am to psychologizing social movements I would be tempted to suggest that there may be some insecurity there as well. Why, for example, do people who are so fervent about “diversity” find it so important that everyone has to “buy in” and agree about it? “Diversity” leaves little room for actual diversity of opinions and values.
“We simply must, for survival, figure out how to adapt to people different from ourselves,” Likens kept repeating in various formulations, but diversiphiles are not in fact very tolerant of those who don’t “buy in” to its demands to treat people differently because of their race or ethnicity.
In the old days the fervor of the civil rights movement was based on faith in our shared and common humanity, that fundamentally people are all the same. If the classic 1964 movie “Nothing But A Man” were made today, it would, in addition to having the opposite content, have to be called something like “All Men (And Women And Others) Are Different.”
In my view “diversity’s” enchantment with “difference” is one of its most destructive characteristics, right up there with its abandonment of the principle that bars discrimination by race.
Finally, with more self-restraint than will be evident here (I would like to challenge the notion that the world is any more “diverse” than it used to be, but I’ll save that), let me close with one more irony. All the complaints about “intellectual inbreeding” and “marrying our cousins” and the need to embrace global diversity etc. notwithstanding, exactly how does President Likens plan to implement his deeply embedded vision?
Likins emphasized the compatibility between diversity and Focused Excellence, his plan to narrow the university’s mission. He said the university’s geographic placement in the Southwest means it should strive for excellence in areas that study the people of the region.
He pointed to the American Indian Studies Program as “world-class” and said he was confident the Mexican American Studies program could reach the same level.
Seems like parochial intellectual navel-gazing to me.
When reading Likens’ remarks, does any term come to mind other than “Commissar?”
At the risk of sounding overly alarmist, it seems imperative that these “diversity” totalitarians are defeated politically–not an easy task given the educational orthodoxies at hand. But to borrow from Churchill, I suggest that whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…
(Setting about responding to all your posts today, John. Not stalking you. Seriously.)
What leaps out at me is the insistence that “it means embedding diversity in core beliefs and acting out those beliefs.” This is genuinely scary rhetoric, and it’s also exactly the reverse of the truth. It reveals the self-referential, circular, and, yes, totalitarian nature of such a mindset.
Commitment to diversity as such ought to be the logical conclusion of our core beliefs–it ought to be reducible to and deducible from some bedrock moral principle or set of principles. Diversiphiles want it the other way around–all our moral principles should in their view be reducible to our commitment to diversity, and that commitment should be the assumption that is our ethical point of departure.
Rather than beginning at the beginning–with some concept of the good, beautiful, and true–these folks would have us begin with their conclusion, and judge ourselves and our behavior by reference to it (rather than to some fundamental concept like ordinary fairness, justice, and common sense). That’s why they reject, and are highly suspicious of, appeals to transcendent standards of morality like Fair Play, Justice, Merit, and so on. Appealing to these things evokes in them what can only be described as wild contempt.
The above comment is about right–these people are pure poison, whether they know it or not.