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The Trump administration has pressed Harvard and other academic institutions to open themselves up to more “viewpoint diversity”. And, if nothing else, Harvard’s leadership has for the first time committed themselves to “viewpoint diversity”, but what they mean by that may be very different.
Everyone is familiar with the negative argument for DEI, affirmative action and similar diversity programs which claim that our country and its institutions suffer from “systemic racism” that has to be remedied through equity programs that discriminate in favor of underrepresented groups and against those groups deemed to be overrepresented. Mostly white people and Asians.
Anyone who has sat through corporate or government diversity training in the past few years probably also encountered the positive argument for DEI which is that a diversity of races, cultures, sexual identities and genders also provides viewpoint diversity. That was the argument that the Biden administration made in defense of its diversity mandates.
“Cognitively diverse teams are better at solving complex problems when compared to more homogenous teams even when the homogenous teams are composed of top performing highly capable individuals,” Army Secretary Eric Fanning had argued. The Biden official contended that it takes members of “different ethnic or cultural” groups to produce better results.
“People who are different from one another in race, gender and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand,” Berkeley’s Greater Good Center contended. “A male and female engineer might have perspectives as different from one another as an engineer and a physicist.”
While that’s no doubt true in any number of areas, is that really true in science? Have women or men made major scientific discoveries about the way the world works that the opposite sex could never have uncovered? And could women have never duplicated male discoveries? The discovery of DNA is fittingly attributed to two men and one woman. Did Marie Curie succeed in isolating radium because she had a fundamentally different perspective on account of her sex or because she was a dedicated researcher? Does the nature of the universe have a gender? Is the scientific method different for men and women?
And, more absurdly still, is it different for members of different races and ethnic groups?
The idea that individuals, no matter how innovative, intelligent or creative, are still “homogenous” as long as they have the same skin color is not only racist, but is mindlessly collectivist. And the notion that ideas are the products of biology, of ethnicity and of skin color, rather than of individuals insists on the primacy of the group over the individual.
The Left not only suffers from groupthink, it suffers from the belief that only groups think. And if only groups think, then intellectual or viewpoint diversity only requires that members of different groups take part. It doesn’t matter who the individuals are so long as the group has a diverse representation of every group. A group with the dumbest possible white man, black man, lesbian and transgender man is inherently better than a “homogenous” group of geniuses because the geniuses lack diversity and therefore can’t come up with any new ideas.
Just don’t tell that to the researchers at the Manhattan Project.
People don’t come up with ideas, as Biden’s former Army Secretary already told us, groups do. A white man, no matter what his personality, his interests or skillset, can only come up with ‘white man ideas’ and a Latino woman with ‘Latino woman ideas.’ Unless someone diversely puts the two of them together, they’ll be hopelessly trapped in their homogenous boxes.
Obama and Biden officials dismissed the threat of China because, they claimed, the People’s Republic was not a true competitor because it lacked diversity. It couldn’t come up with new ideas because everyone was Chinese. Universities, including Harvard, struggled to keep out Asian students because they lacked diversity and would trap colleges into echo chambers full of students who only had ‘Asian ideas’. Harvard and other colleges engaged in racist admissions practices driven by racist ideas because they were convinced diversity was anti-racist rather than racist.
Scale up the racist credo that the only way to succeed is to have the widest possible mix of groups and you end up with everything from open borders to systemic racism. America, many liberals came to believe, could not succeed without maximizing its diversity. Any institution that was not diverse was doomed. And, retroactively, anything that was not diverse was worthless.
Most culture, science and history that occurred before DEI’s eternal Year Zero has been deemed worthless because they were not diverse. Art museums jettison classical paintings. The work of Nobel Prize winners is written off because they were white men who could not truly understand the universe because they were not diverse.
And that which is not diverse is inherently flawed.
America is only as good as it is diverse. The Constitution, the Renaissance and most mathematics are bad because they are not diverse. Had more diverse groups put them together, they would have been far better and will soon be replaced by diverse output.
Rather than measuring diversity by its accomplishments, accomplishments are defined by diversity, and as a result, much of what we produce has become worthless. Rather than producing new ideas, diversity rehashes the same old ideological ones. Academia became less intellectually diverse even as it became more racially and sexually diverse. By making diversity its supreme value, universities adopted a dogma and the political monoculture that goes with it. You can have intellectual and racial diversity as long as they operate within a competitive environment and a marketplace of ideas. Diversity’s only real idea however is diversity. And by diversity it means people, of different races and backgrounds, who believe the same things.
Diversity has little disagreement because the only kind of diversity it values is external. It substitutes external diversity for internal diversity. The only diverse people allowed inside are those who already agree with its fundamental beliefs. And if they disagree, it can only be a limited disagreement in one direction. There is room for intellectual diversity between socialists, Communists and the occasional free market liberal who leaves a lot of room for government intervention. There’s likewise some room for viewpoint diversity between those who believe America is a colonial settler state forever tainted by its original sins and those who contend that it can be redeemed through more diversity. But there’s no room for going out of this leftist box.
Diversity is not an intellectual value, it’s a political one, and therefore it cannot tolerate intellectual diversity and it also cannot be debated. Intellectual ideas can be debated, political ones must be accepted. The only way to maintain a climate of political debate is to have intellectual diversity. The more politics determine the nature of ideas, the fewer ideas there are.
And diversity’s real underlying concept is that the only worthwhile ideas proceed from the political conditions produced by diversity and through the conditions created by politics. Testing this theory in any kind of way is forbidden because that would be bigoted. Questioning it is also bigoted. Any disagreement at all is bigoted and therefore unacceptable.
This is not an argument, it’s a political dogma meant to enforce conformity by banning any arguments against its own premises. An academic institution that accepts it, as virtually all of academia has, ceases to function as anything except a totalitarian political organization with its own thought police, mobs and machinery for outing and ousting all forms of political dissent.
And that is what modern universities have become.
Skin color is not actually a point of view, but the argument that skin color is a point of view is a useful political line for enforcing conformity under the guise of diversity. To argue that groups think and individuals don’t is to dismiss every non-conforming individual as a representative of old non-diverse ideas if he’s white or as non-representative of his group if he’s non-white.
Diversity is the enemy of intellectual diversity because it is the enemy of individuals. Challenging it is the only hope for the return of a country where people think for themselves.
We don’t need Diversity we need Common Sense
Even babies can differentiate between people who look like them and those who don’t. And its a fact that they usually like attractive ones more than ugly ones.
When I used to live in another country, I once had an ethnic Chinese baby see me up close and he burst out crying in terror. And I’m movie star handsome.
And in America, when white kids see black people up close during their infancy they do the same thing. They start bawling.
I’ve seen these things a lot more than twice.
THOSE ARE FACTS. Lefties hate facts but they claim things like that aren’t true, even though they also claim white babies are racists (Mainly against against blacks, blacks, blacks of course) in their mother’s wombs and but ONLY white kids.
It’s natural for babies and youngsters to prefer people who look like them. Racial tolerance is learned behavior. So is racism in most cases. My girlfriend told me she liked to see people who “looked like her” in movies and I had to explain to her how full of shit she was.
I got through to her, though.
You’re movie star handsome the way Danny De Vito is movie star handsome, I’m sure.
Throwing away all that marvelous white handsomeness on black girls! What’s wrong with you! Get some white therapy.
And you are MIT smart the way Karl Marx was philosophy dumb, I’m sure.
WTF is wrong with you? You can see my avatar photo. And I like black chicks. So what?
It is a FACT that everyone, even babies, like to see people who look like them. But your girlfriend is “full of shit” because she wants to see people who look like her in movies???
You think like a stroke victim. I hope your brain heals soon.
And you don’t think at all. I notice you never respond to any of the comments directed at you.
My guess is you are too chickenshit to actually think beyond your initial leftist drivel.
You’re obviously a retard. I don’t get excited if I see a bunch of whiteys on my TV. I’m not insecure or racist. What normal person cares about that shit? It’s an unhealthy attitude.
An incredible turn of events. Daniel Greenfield actually takes the time to articulate the point of view he opposes. He even (shock of shocks!!!!) grants that the “positive argument for DEI” is “no doubt true in any number of areas.” The stage is set for an actual, serious, critical discussion about a very important and controversial topic.
The (most unshockingly) the essay devolves into straw man nonsense. No, Daniel, nobody actually said that “individuals, no matter how innovative, intelligent or creative, are still “homogenous” as long as they have the same skin color.” No, Daniel, nobody said that “a group with the dumbest possible white man, black man, lesbian and transgender man is inherently better than a “homogenous” group of geniuses.” Nobody said “the Renaissance and most mathematics are bad because they are not diverse.” That’s just silly, Daniel.
This article is 40% serious, which is a higher percentage than the average Grenfieldiad. I’ll grant you that.
“The founding fathers as thinkers of the Enlightenment era, championed the power of man’s unaided intellect. It was on this basis, After centuries of European tyranny, that they urged the right to liberty, which was the right of each man to rely in action on his own mind’s judgment. They upheld this right because they believed that the human mind is reliable — that, properly employed, it can reach a knowledge of reality and give the individual the guidance he needs to live. The individual, they held, does not have to submit blindly to any authority, whether church or state, because he has within himself a brilliant and potent cognitive tool to direct him. That tool is the power of reason, the only “oracle” he needs — “oracle” in the sense of a source of absolute, objective truth.
There is no such truth, said the antipode and destroyer of the founding father’s legacy. I mean Immanuel Kant. Kant is the basic cause of the modern anti-reason trend. He is the man who, two hundred years ago, launched an unprecedented attack on the power of the human mind, declared that reason is in principle, incapable of knowing reality, and thereby put an end to the Enlightenment…. In countless forms ,Kant’s rejection of reason is at the root of our modern colleges….
The founding fathers, being champions of reason, were champions of the individual. Reason, they held, is an attribute of each man alone, by himself; the power of the mind means the power of the individual. With today’s anti-reason trend, however, such individualism simply disappears.” – “Assault From the Ivory Tower: The Professors’ War Against America “ by Leonard Peikoff
I read this after your allusion to it. Thank you.
I repeat here that I assign “Francisco’s Money Speech to students in Econ courses.”
(At the corner of Dummy and TrumpIsAlwaysRight, that makes me a liberal.) That there is no objective truth has reached the highest levels. Evidence? President Trump keeps telling us gasoline is $1.98 is some places. I guess that’s “his truth.”
I’m glad you enjoyed the article Professor!
Oh Ritchie you are a liberal. Some day, when you come down a few feet from Mt. Monmouth, you will realize it. There are so many things in your life to deny, aren’t there.
How do you know there isn’t 1.98 per gallon gas in some places. Have you been everywhere? Gas is 2.75 per after discounts.
In the meantime, have another glass of chardonnay with your new boyfriend
Oh God, not another irrelevant homework assignment from 1983, by a guy no one really gives crap about,
Thanks T. I’ll pass. I think I have laundry to do.
Once again……. there needs to be a Daniel Greenfield Reader which contains DG’s insight rich pieces like this one that deserve to be reread and reread and thought about.
Please flag this one as a keeper.
If this is read by DG himself: I know this just pours out of you and as such you may not fully appreciate its value but it is on Thomas Sowell’s level and its value extends beyond the events of this week. And it is easy to picture publishing a book and it just going nowhere and end up being just a bunch of unsold and unread book in dusty boxes in warehouse somewhere. But that would only be the result of poor marketing. I know how it should be done, which is well produced videos read by a professional voice actor and put together with someone with the the right hands. This does not need to be expensive and I for one would contribute to it. Here is a short clip I did years ago which I think will show you what can be done with very little money – this one had a budget of $0.00 I wrote the script, shot all the video and had my mother who is not a voice actor read it. But with all of that said it is not terrible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yz4mve4C8c The main thing is that it be done with an elevated taste that the intelligence of the text is worthy of.
The reason there is no more common sense is because the people with wisdom are dying. Senior citizens have wisdom and Lie-berals have knowledge. As the senior citizens die, common sense go with them and the Lie-beral move up and replace them. Haven’t you noticed that just about everything is ran by Lie-berals ? Somebody needs to tell them that youth does not necessarily have common sense; THAT comes from life experiences, but young people are brainwashed into believing that ‘old’ is no good. When I was much younger, I never could understand why old people did not like young people. NOW, I know. Old people don’t like young people because they think they know everything.
If you just have FACTS, you need to know when and how and where to use those facts.
This excellent article makes me realize I have become even more extreme in my views.
“Diversity” means non-white or, at best, fewer white people. It doesn’t matter if it is qualified by words like “view point.”
Diversity is not a political value but a religion complete with objects of worship, blasphemy laws, definitions of sin, and methods for making atonement which, if you are white, will not be complete until you cease to exist. The religious nature of diversity is why
1. accomplishment is defined by diversity;
2. diversity cannot be debated;
3. only diverse (non-white) people can be “insiders,”
4. white “original sin” can be redeemed exclusively by more diversity;
5. all unbelievers are blasphemers and debate is impossible;
6. goodness is measured by diversity and its laws;
7. all society must be politically shaped by diversity by force of law; etc. etc. etc.
And yes, individuals think, but so do groups. Outside of a precious few individuals (the vanguard), most of us do not think outside the box that is defined by our elites, who control (or would control) almost all our information.
A new vanguard is forming now. They see and think outside the box. Early vanguards like Tommy Robinson are paying a heavy price for all of us, but more are waking up. These brave men (and women) need the rest of us to support and defend them if we want to save a civilization built upon ordered liberty – a concept that took thousands of years for westernkind to form and implement.
We also must realize that our way of living under ordered liberty is not suitable to most third-world “diverse” peoples whose best government would require a much heavier hand.
Seven years ago I received an email from the president of Vassar, where I had attended school and, which had been sent to all alumnae in which she boasted about Vassar’s promotion of diversity. I emailed her back asking if that included conservatism, or was that too diverse?
Whereas Marxism promises a dictatorship of the proletariat, DEI promises a dictatorship of the bureaucracy. Either way, “woke” academia promises disciples of dictators.
Two observations straight out of the academy (I am recovering from my time in the academy):
A recruiting slogan where no one saw the irony: “Many faces. One vision.”
In a diversity training course (one day long and required) A faculty member asks “What if your diverse group is unable to reach a consensus or even any decision at all?”
Instructor answers: “Then you have too much diversity.”