“Diversity” And Political Correctness At Brown

NOTE: This post has been UPDATED [6 June] … and UPDATED again [8 June]

In a recent post I discussed a speech criticizing college “diversity” officials by Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart of Brown, whose point was that they only gave their colleges the appearance of caring about “diversity” when in fact they weren’t doing nearly enough. In an UPDATE to that post I quoted a long and somewhat harsh criticism of my comments from Prof. Hu-DeHart, and added some additional responses of my own.

That exchange was read by a recent graduate of Brown, who sent me the following email and has graciously allowed me to reprint it.

I’m a recent graduate of Brown University….

At the beginning of my freshman year, we eager young students (the vast majority of whom were reflexively very liberal on racial issues) were herded into the school Athletic Center for a speech on ending racism and embracing diversity from who we were told was an extremely respected professor of “Ethnic Studies.” Not having heard of the term and not yet cynical about the ivory tower, I remember sitting down with my new friends towards the front of the sea of plastic folding chairs and being genuinely excited about having my horizons broadened.

The arrogant and intolerant 45-minute screed that followed, from one Evelyn Hu-DeHart, obliterated my good will and kickstarted my disillusionment with the campus left, especially dogmatic post-modernists who think that saying “truth is relative” automatically makes any of their kneejerk opinions valid. Hu-Dehart’s speech was thick with self-important condescension and could be summarized as “We must have a safe space for discussion, and anyone who disputes my views on race and gender is an intolerant bigot who is destroying that safe space, and all white people (and most heterosexuals) are conscious or unconscious racists/sexists/homophobes who must be reeducated by those of us who are sophisticated and have known oppression.” Her lecture was followed by “break-out sessions,” in which carefully-chosen “discussion leaders” would pressure and cajole white students into confessing their personal bigotry and their shame to be part of a racist culture before those of minority background, who were implictly granted de facto moral superiority and assumed to be powerless victims.

Even some of my most liberal friends were shocked and disheartened by the shallowness and extravagant pettiness of it all, and Hu-DeHart was the target of much derision — none of it racially based, though she would surely insist that it was “unconsciously” so. I wish I could say that her speech was the low point of this kind of nonsense, but in four years at Brown the propaganda and indoctrination are simply unavoidable; even asking questions of the conventional wisdom can get one tarred with all sorts of vicious accusations….

I think this statement is both an eloquent statement of the current, sorry state of political correctness on campus as well as an encouraging reminder that pockets of sanity remain.

UPDATE

Prof. Hu-DeHart objected to the editor of a mailing list to which I (and she) subscribe distributing a copy this post, with the former Brown student’s communication, to the list. And she also objected to my quoting her criticism of my original post, which I did in the UPDATE to my original post linked in the first sentence of this post.

Oh well, here I go again. Here are her objections and my response:

John: Why do you guys circulate unsigned diatribes like this? Right after you talked about ad hominen attacks! Why don’t you practice what you preach? And John, did you ask my permission to post my comment on your blog, as you so kindly asked this anonymous student? Another double standard for those who agree with you and those who challenge you?

Ed: this is absolutely the last time I am going to weigh in on any issue, and this is exactly why so few of your readers dare to make any comments, for fear of their comments being widely circulated in such irresponsible ways!

Who exactly are “you guys”? In any event, I did not and do not regard the email by the former Brown student who related personal reactions to an indoctrination session at Brown to be a “diatribe,” but I can understand why you wouldn’t want it widely distributed. And it was not “unsigned” when I received it. The sender, now working for a politically correct employer, wanted to remain anonymous, and I honored that request.

My original blog posting discussing your criticisms of “diversity” as practiced today was sent by the editor to readers of this list. Your response was sent to this list — a list, by the way, that includes a number of journalists — which suggests to me that you did not regard your comments about what I said to be privileged and confidential.

Silly me: I would have thought that you’d want your objections to what I wrote to be read far and wide. Since you had sent your comments to a widely distributed list (a list, by the way, that may well have more, and more influential, readers than does my blog), it simply didn’t occur to me that you would object to my sharing your objections to my original post with others who had read that post on my blog but who do not have access to the list. Indeed, the only “double standard” here would have been refusing to share with my readers the public criticisms of someone “who challenge[d] me.”

Finally, I find it odd that you see a “double standard” in my belief that forwarding a personal communication to a public list must be treated with more care than quoting a communication to a public list on another public forum. But then, as I wrote in the UPDATE to my original post —

http://www.discriminations.us/2008/06/a_diversiphile_dumps_on_the_di.html

— diversiphiles such as yourself “think a number of odd things.”

UPDATE II [8 June]

Prof. Hu-DeHart seems to lack experience dealing with anyone who disagrees with her (except, perhaps, an odd student or two whose objections, such as the thoughtful one above, can be airly dismissed as only “diatribes”). But whether through inexperience or simple reflex rigidity she seems incapable of moving beyond ad hominem invective, as evidenced by her latest response:

John: I think you are clueless! or maybe not–you are just deliberately confrontational, an agent provocateur for no other reason than to insult someone gratuitously!

Well, O.K. Color me clueless if you want to be kind (being dumb is better than being “confrontational,” an “agent provocateur” who insults for the fun of it, right?). But, if you’ll allow poor dumb me one more comment, your verbal rock throwing would be more effective if you could provide an example of where I insulted you. True, I did call you a “diversiphile,” borrowing Peter Wood’s useful term, and I did point to your influential role in securing Ward Churchill a tenured position at Colorado, but I find it surprising that you would regard these descriptions as insults.

O.K. You’ve got me. I lied when I said “one more comment” above, because here’s another one. You write:

why would Brown or any university conduct an “indoctrination” program? Obviously that is a loaded word, but you used it as if it was what Brown intended to do, and that is does not carry all kinds of negative connotations. So by endorsing that term used by the student, what do you hope to contribute to a conversation on diversity? Absolutely nothing!

Of course, I didn’t use the term “indoctrination,” as you seem to recognize in the sentence following the one where you say that I did. In that sentence my guilt was not in using but in “endorsing” the term. But no matter; I plead guilty: I did mention the student’s reaction to what the email described to me as an indoctrination program at Brown, one example of the “propaganda and indoctrination experienced” by this student in four years there, and I have no hesitation in saying that that session does indeed sound like indoctrination, as enforcing political correctness usually does.

I’m not the one to judge whether what I’ve posted on my blog “contribute[s] to a conversation on diversity,” but I will say that I have found that the best, most persuasive criticisms of “diversity” — like the best, most persuasive criticisms of “affirmative action” — are ones that simply describe how it actually operates in practice.

Finally (I hope), you write:

As to the student who was obviously damaged by my effort to indoctrinate, he seems to be a glutton for punishment, or why else subject himself to a politically correct employee [sic] who must be subjecting him to more indoctrination every day, to the point where he cannot even sign his own name? Give me a break, but I am not wasting any more time with you!

Why do you assume “he” is a he? Does that assumption reveal a subconscious, or possibly conscious, sexism on your part, where males are either a) the only students with enough independence and gumption to resist politically correct indoctrination, or b) the only students dumb enough to reject the truth once it is explained to them?

Maybe the former Brown student who emailed me is a “glutton for punishment,” psychologically damaged by four years at Brown and turned into the modern equivalent of the slave’s “Sambo personality” controversially described by Stanley Elkins in a famous book several decades ago.

Or, in the alternative, perhaps that student has simply chosen a field where most of the employers share your views. If they also share the way you respond to criticism of those views, the substance and style of your comments here provide convincing evidence that it was quite rational of him or her to insist on anonymity.