“Associational Preference” And The Rationale For “Diversity”

I have criticized more than once the, for lack of a better term, hypocrisy of higher education institutions whose lofty statements of principle trumpet their devotion to fundamental principles of non-discrimination, including the “without regard” principle, while other statements and a myriad of policies proudly proclaim exactly the opposite, that they are committed to using race, ethnicity, and gender to produce “diversity.”

As I discussed several years ago, in a post that I invite you now to re-read (or read), Preferences, Principles, And Hypocrisy In Higher Education (Hey, I just had to re-read it; why shouldn’t you?), the University of Pennsylvania is a typical example. Its Policy of Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination states (or least it did in 2004 when I first quoted it):

Penn adheres to a policy that prohibits discrimination against individuals on the following protected-class bases: race, color, sex (except where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification), sexual orientation, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, age (except where age is a bona fide occupational qualification), disability (and those associated with persons with disabilities), or status as a special disabled, Vietnam era veteran or other eligible veteran.

….

Penn is committed to ensuring that all academic programs (except where age or sex are bona fide occupational qualifications), including social and recreational programs, and services are administered without regard to an individual’s protected-class status.

Penn is also committed to ensuring that its personnel and other employment decisions are made without regard to an individual’s protected-class status. [Emphasis added]

Penn, of course, is permeated with policies that explicitly violate the “without regard” principle, and my post went on to mention some of them.

Now take a look at this initially similar statement of principle at the University of Iowa, as quoted in this fascinating column in the Des Moines Register (HatTip to RealClearPolitics):

The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination … on the basis of race, national origin, color, creed, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or associational preference.

If you note that somewhat opaque “associational preference” at the very end of the string of protected categories that are off limits to discrimination, you will see why I said the Iowa statement was only “initially similar” to others of its ilk.

What is “associational preference,” you ask, and what does it actually protect? Good question. Nobody seems to know, including officials at the University of Iowa, although there is evidence at Iowa that political affiliation comes under its somewhat leaky umbrella. As a result, a controversy has been ignited by a complaint filed by Mark Moyar, an unsuccessful applicant for a position in the history department noting that the department contains 27 registered Democrats and 0 registered Republicans.

The Des Moines Register column describes Molar as

a[n] historian with an impressive record: bachelor’s degree from Harvard, doctorate from Cambridge; two books, one with Cambridge University Press; laudatory recommendations from distinguished historians; and a growing record of public commentary in national periodicals.

The point of his complaint is not that he wasn’t hired but that he was more qualified that all eight candidates who were selected for a final screening. His problem?

He is also a conservative, and his thesis about the Vietnam War – that it was a noble cause that could have triumphed had the United States supported its allies more vigorously — falls well on the right side of things.

Molar himself has an article today on National Review Online going into greater detail about his complaint, and it is well worth reading. He makes, not surprisingly, a variation of the familiar “diversity” (in this case, however, real diversity) argument, noting that

the University’s own hiring manual states that search committees must “assess ways the applicants will bring rich experiences, diverse backgrounds, and ideology to the university community.”

Molar proposes, in effect, that universities spend as much time delving into the ideology of applicants as they do in determining skin color and, presumably, weigh it as heavily on the “diversity” scale. I have reservations about this approach — would, should, it for example, encourage the creation of “Conservative Studies” programs on the model of the Blacks Studies and Womens’ Studies programs that were and remain a primary means of promoting race and gender “diversity”? One of their initial functions was to funnel black and women that traditional departments would not hire onto faculties. That seems to be what Prof. Molar (now a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University) suggests, calling on universities “to create new faculty positions for conservatives beyond the reach of other professors’ tentacles, as other schools have started doing.”

But I don’t want to argue remedies today; I want to discuss the nature of the problem. Or I should say, the nature of the problem if there is one, since Iowa, and other universities, maintain there is no problem, that they cannot assess the ideology of applicants and, even if they could, they should not. If there’s no problem, of course, no remedy is needed.

Whether we are still in a post-modern era or have progressed (or regressed, if you prefer) into a post-post-modern era, it remains powerfully true that fields like history are much more enthralled by interpretation than fact. Graduate students spend as much (usually, quite a bit more) time mastering the various and conflicting interpretations of the past than they do on the pedestrian and mundane details of what actually happened. (“Actually!” they might exclaim aghast. “Actually? Don’t tell me you still believe in the correspondence theory of truth.”) If point of view takes precedence over what is viewed, if it takes a black to teach black history and a woman to teach womens’ history, then … well, you can see where this leads.

What interests me, however, is not what (if anything) should be done about the ideological imbalance in humanities and social science faculties. What interests me is how a whole generation of academics appears to have so little difficulty reconciling irreconcilable principles and behaviors: professing a commitment to treating people “without regard” to race, ethnicity, and gender while proceeding flagrantly and proudly to “take race [and ethnicity and gender] into account,” favoring some and disfavoring others on the basis of characteristics they continue to promise not to regard; professing a profound commitment to the fundamental indispensability of “diversity” while remaining cavalierly unconcerned about an ideological conformity in many departments that would make forced re-education camps green with envy.

At first I though the answer might lie in cognitive dissonance:

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon first identified by [Stanford psychologist] Leon Festinger. It occurs when there is a discrepancy between what a person believes, knows and values, and persuasive information that calls these into question. The discrepancy causes psychological discomfort, and the mind adjusts to reduce the discrepancy. In ethics, cognitive dissonance is important in its ability to alter values, such as when an admired celebrity embraces behavior that his or her admirers deplore. Their dissonance will often result in changing their attitudes toward the behavior. Dissonance also leads to rationalizations of unethical conduct, as when the appeal and potential benefits of a large amount of money makes unethical actions to acquire it seem less objectionable than if they were applied to smaller amounts.

But this, on reflection, doesn’t work, since our esteemed faculties don’t seem to experience any dissonance at all, cognitive or otherwise. If they did, they’d at least revise all their statements of civil rights principles to reflect what they actually do in their affirmative action policies. But they don’t.

In any event, for whatever reason I’m simply not very interested in hearing about (much less proposing) cures to this conformity. But I do confess one keen interest: I would dearly love to hear a learned exposition of exactly why the fate of the university and indeed of the western world as we know it rests on our success in achieving pigmentary “diversity” — what, for example, does it contribute to the life of the mind? — while ideological diversity appears to be of no concern whatever.