For Immediate Release December 23, 1997

If you’ve followed what’s going on in education lately, you’ve discovered that one of the main goals of colleges and universities is "diversity." Which brings to mind several questions, which ought to be asked—but which so far have not made it to the public square:

What are some of the ways in which diversity can be attained? They seem to be fairly obvious:

You can have diversity on the basis of characteristics people can see: race, height, weight, and so on.

You can have diversity on the basis of gender.

You can have diversity on the basis of sexual preference: homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual.

You can have diversity on the basis of talents or abilities: artistic, intellectual, and so forth.

You can have diversity on the basis of ideas and values: political, religious, cultural, and personal.

You can have diversity on the basis of physical disabilities or observable mental illness.

Now, there are probably a lot of other criteria by which diversity can be identified, such as place of bight, hair style, family size, marital status, and so on. But where "diversity" –which, by the way, used to be "multiculturalism" –is an institutional goal, only some of these criteria are used.

Let’s look at the criteria. If the criteria are characteristics you can see, then it is logical that, to be fair, the percentage of faculty or students who represent any category should represent the percentage found in the general population. So it would then follow that we need so-and-so many "visually challenged" individuals, so-and-so many portly people, so-and-so many observably mentally ill people—until we have a representative number of "diverse" populations. If the result would be better education, it would then seem to be desirable to pursue even greater diversity. People characterized by qualities such as "redheadedness", or "tallness" or other such characteristics would need to be recruited.

But such recruitment is not happening, because "diversity" doesn’t necessarily improve quality. So, if diversity in and of itself does not result in quality, how can it possibly be a reasonable goal where the focus is supposed to be excellence in education?

Let’s say, though, that the "diversity" criterion is diversity in cultural values, or beliefs, or ideologies. Which cultural values will be "celebrated"? Will we recruit people who value female circumcision? Or will we call it "genital mutilation", and condemn its practitioners? How about those whose cultural values approve of the Iraqi-American parents recently in the news, who arranged the marriage of their daughters, age 13 and 14, to adult men?

Authorities in Nebraska didn’t celebrate diversity. The new husbands were sentenced to 4-6 years in prison for sexual assault on a child. How about white supremacists or Nation of Islam adherents? Do we want their "diverse ideologies"?

If all ideas are not accepted as being of equal worth, then such ideas are being judged according to some standard. And when that happens, it’s obvious that one set of values is determined to be better than another. Or one person’s culture better than another’s. But whose culture will be used as standards by which we judge other cultures? Certainly not traditional American culture. It has been relentlessly assailed by historical revisionists, and even by the President of the United States, who recently declared, "We’re redefining in practical terms the immutable [which means, literally, unchanging", "unalterable"] ideas that have guided us.

What is really going on when "diversity" is a chief goal of U.S. universities? [When "everybody’s doing it," and when nobody is challenging it?] Is there a political agenda? Is there mindless capitulation to political correctness? Is there fear of expressing a diverse opinion about "diversity"?

Taxpayers deserve to know what their public servants mean by "diversity", and what evidence there is that "diversity" leads to quality. They deserve to know whether diversity is more important than achievement as a criterion for recruitment of faculty and students. They deserve to know what kind is "undesirable." They also deserve to know who decided what is good and what is bad, how they decided it, whose standards they used, and why those standards are "right".

Since these questions have not been asked, let alone answered, it seems safe to draw an obvious conclusion: The democratic process is being subverted by a self-anointed academic aristocracy. What we are witnessing is an end run around the ballot box by a die-hard dictatorship of affirmative action zealots and an assortment of miscellaneous "rights" activists. And if that’s the case, it’s time to blow the whistle and tell them that they’re out-of-bounds.

This article, from the Independence Institute staff, fellows and research network, is offered for your use at no charge. Independence Feature Syndicate articles are published for educational purposes only, and the authors speak for themselves. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an attempt to influence any election or legislative action.
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