“Diversity,” The Liberal Orthodoxy

The University of Virginia is as good as any place on earth to observe that “diversity” has become the opiate of the liberal elites and their followers, deadening thought and dumbing down analysis. Accusations today of “soft on ‘diversity’!” echo the “soft on communism!” accusations and innuendos of McCarthyism, and serve the same silencing, orthodoxy-reinforcing function. Now, as then, there is an evil, insidious villain — now it’s the “vast right-wing conspiracy” — supported maliciously by hard-corps cadres, i.e., racists and Republicans (but I repeat myself), but often “unwittingly” by dupes and fellow-travelers.

Mindless orthodoxy is always unpleasant, but it seems especially abhorrent on university campuses, and even more especially at Mr. Jefferson’s University in Charlottesville (which has Grounds but no campus). The latest episode of it here concerns the dismay of some students, and the anger of others, that the president of the University would deign to invite a commencement speaker who, they claim, is not sufficiently enthusiastic about “diversity,” the distinguished University alumnus, former UVa law professor, former newspaper editor, and current judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, J. Harvie Wilkinson III. (Wilkinson, by the way, has not been immune from criticism here.)

Karen Agness (first heard from here as a UVa undergraduate blasting feminist orthodoxy and last, here, as a UVa law student criticizing a proposed “diversity” loyalty oath) does a wonderful number on UVa’s “diversity” orthodoxy in today’s Cavalier Daily (which reprints, without attribution, her identical piece that appeared in the Washington Post last Sunday). From the WaPo version (which has links missing from the Cavalier Daily):

…. Some U-Va. students have launched an effort to challenge the selection of Wilkinson in the name of protecting “diversity,” complete with columns, an online petition drive and hints that they will disrupt graduation.

This growing effort shows that too often, diversity is absent from the one facet of campus life where it is essential: intellectual life.

Supporters purport to use “diversity” synonymously with open-mindedness; they argue for the U-Va. administration to hire a “dean for diversity,” for the faculty to offer a wider variety of classes and for students to sign a “diversity pledge.” They sing the virtues of learning about people from different places with different points of view. Yet, when it comes to listening to someone with a reputation for being politically conservative, that supposed open-mindedness quickly dissipates.

Because some students disagree with a few of Wilkinson’s opinions, they are quick to claim that his opinions are “discriminatory” and illustrate “blatant political bias.” A student columnist described one “problem” with his selection: “It is that his political biases will alienate a large number of students when a commencement speaker should bring students together.” Others justify their complaints with the need to “protect diversity,” claiming that inviting Wilkinson is against U-Va.’s “long-standing commitment to diversity.” But where is their support for diversity when it comes to a more politically conservative public figure?

These students argue that because some of Wilkinson’s rulings are disagreeable to them, he is offensive. Their message is: If you disagree with someone on a few issues, that person is automatically offensive, discriminatory and alienating — and therefore, should have no place on campus. This is the opposite of true intellectual diversity.

These UVa students who object to other students being exposed to views with which they disagree are all little liberals in the making. As such, they perfect embody some of the maladies of modern liberalism adroitly skewered by Camille Paglia, herself a liberal but a free-thinking, iconoclastic one. Note, for example, her response to a question recently submitted to her Salon column:

…. Is it possible that there might be something really ugly at the core of contemporary liberalism? You call yourself a liberal, and you vote liberal, yet you are under constant attack by your liberal compatriots. Why? ….

Yes, something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power….

…. For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I’m not kidding — there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It’s a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play.

H.L. Mencken once famously (and unfairly) defined a Puritan as someone who lives in fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time. Today’s puritans, devout congregations of whom are located on college campuses and major media newsrooms and editorial boards, live in fear lest someone harboring doubts about “diversity” may wander into their lairs or, somehow, be invited to appear on a prestigious public platform.

Say What?