Anyone in need of a dose of “diversity awareness” should travel to Crookston, Minnesota, this week where the University of Minnesota, Crookston, has put together an unusually inclusive program for its “Diversity Awareness Week.”
There are, to be sure, the usual and expected panels on such things as “working in a diverse and global workplace” and “the definitions and symbols used in the GLBT community,” but, somewhat unusual for a program of this sort, there is also a “religious diversity workshop … where participants will have the chance to explore questions on religious diversity.”
Virtually every institution these days professes its devotion to “diversity,” but I wonder how many of them “take religion into account” — even as “one of many factors” — in their admissions and hiring policies.
Actually, I don’t wonder. I think I know. I also think that “diversity” is a pretense at those institutions” that do not “take religion into account” in admissions and hiring, a smokescreen to disguise what is in fact nothing other than simple racial preference.
