[NOTE: Thanks to George Leef for his Phi Beta Cons comments and link]
I once wrote (actually more than once, since I said the same thing here, and gave numerous examples here) that Inside Higher Ed editor Scott Jaschik often sounds like “a shrill shill for ‘diversity.’” That description, although perhaps too understated, was confirmed by his publication today (July 16) of an almost humorously pathetic defense of “diversity” by Len Niehoff, “Diversity’s Evidences.”
I discussed Niehoff’s essay today on Minding The Campus. As you will see if you read that discussion, I found it hard to take Niehoff’s argument seriously. Roger Clegg, however, did, in a comment. “Any benefits [of diversity],” he noted, “have to be weighed against the costs of racial discrimination, which this article ignores”:
It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, and themselves, as well as future employers, clients, and patients; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism; it compromises the academic mission of the university and lowers the overall academic quality of the student body; it creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation; it breeds hypocrisy within the school; it encourages a scofflaw attitude among college officials; it mismatches students and institutions, guaranteeing failure for many of the former; it papers over the real social problem of why so many African Americans and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minorities will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership.
One of these days Roger will abandon his natural reticence and say what he really thinks of “diversity”-justified racial preference.
