Monday, June 18, 2007

The Diversity Scam

"Diversity," in the academic context, is usually a euphemism for affirmative action, itself a euphemism for discrimination --variously racial, ethnic, gender or sexual preference based-- in favor of groups viewed as disadvantaged. In the employment context, a diversity hire is someone hired in part because he is black, or she is female, or .. .

What I find particularly irritating about this usage is that those who adopt it are typically opponents of actual diversity. In the academic context, what matter are ideas. Two professors with different gender or skin color but the same views provide less relevant diversity than two professors of the same gender or skin color but sharply opposed views.

Supporters of "diversity" try to obscure this by arguing that a different racial or gender background leads to a different viewpoint. There may be cases where this is true, although it is hard to see its relevance to most academic fields. But in such cases, favoring prospective hires whose work shows a different and original viewpoint is surely more sensible than favoring members of minorities in the hope that they will turn out to provide a different viewpoint.

In fact, at least in my observation, the people and departments most inclined to favor "diversity" in the conventional sense are among those least likely to want to hire professors whose viewpoints differ from the consensus. What they want are people of the desired gender or skin color who agree with them. My standard thought experiment to demonstrate this is to imagine that, at some late stage in the search process, it is discovered that a prospective hire regarded as a strong candidate is a supporter, an intelligent supporter, of South African apartheid. Does the probability of hiring him go up or down as a result? I can predict, with little data but some decades of experience of the academy, that in any elite university and almost any department it goes sharply down. Yet that is a viewpoint to which almost no faculty member or student has been, or expects to be, exposed. Someone who actually believes in intellectual diversity should thus regard the additional fact as a plus, not a minus.

When I offer this thought experiment, a common response is that there are no intelligent supporters of apartheid, hence the additional information shows something wrong with the prospective hire. I take that response as evidence in favor of my thesis. Almost nobody who makes it has had the opportunity to argue apartheid with a serious, sophisticated supporter--indeed, I suspect many of them have never met anyone who would admit to supporting it at all. Yet we know that millions of white South Africans did support it for quite a long period; it is a considerable stretch to claim that none of them could have been intelligent and thoughtful. And, in my thought experiment, the supporter of apartheid has already demonstrated sufficient ability to make him a strong candidate before his unfortunate political beliefs are discovered. The confident belief that no reasonable person could support a position that many otherwise reasonable people did support is strong evidence of the failure to be exposed to a sufficiently diverse range of views.

Academic hiring is not the only example of hostility to diversity by people who claim to favor it. Consider the issues of home schooling and education vouchers. It's pretty clear, I think, to anyone involved in the controversy, that one of the main objections to both is that they foster diversity.

The objection is not, of course, put in those terms. It is rather that both make it possible for parents with the wrong views--in particular fundamentalist Christians--to indoctrinate their children with those views. The clear implication is that it is desirable to make sure that all children get exposed to, perhaps even indoctrinated with, the current consensus views--the ones that they will be taught in the public schools.

If one believes that fundamentalists are wrong and the current consensus correct, it's reasonable enough to want all children exposed to the latter. But even given that belief, it is a position directly opposed to diversity--a desire to lessen diversity by stamping out, so far as possible, those particular dissenting views. And in at least some discussions, the hostility to diversity is explicit; the argument is precisely that it is desirable to have a society whose members share a common set of beliefs. That is, I think, a defensible position, but it is bizarre to have it expressed by people who purport to consider intellectual diversity a desirable objective

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NAACP shoots the messenger

Earnest Johnson, president of the Louisiana NAACP, and other community leaders and residents convened at Lake Chapel CME Church on Thursday to strategize a "three prong attack" against the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, also know as BESE. The meeting was centered around a protest march, "The March on BESE," set to take place on June 30 at the Governor's Mansion in Baton Rouge.

Protesters will rally against the "illegal and unconstitutional" use of the LEAP and GEE exams to determine grade promotion and graduation in the state of Louisiana.

"We will march in order to bring attention to the massive failures of students in the Louisiana public school system," said Johnson. Johnson feels strongly that the high failure rates among Louisiana students are largely due to the standardized exams that are not required by the laws of this state.

LEAP and GEE exams were originally approved by the state Legislature a assessment tools to monitor student performance. It is estimated that at least 16,000 students in the state of Louisiana have failed the state's standardized tests, and have not been promoted to the next grade or graduated from high school.

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School discipline revival in Western Australia?

SCHOOL bullies and other disruptive students will be removed from schools and taught in behaviour centres, away from their victims. Education Minister Mark McGowan announced the controversial pilot program yesterday. Three centres for teenagers are expected to be set up in Fremantle-Peel, the City of Canning and Kalgoorlie by October as part of the trial, which will be extended to other areas if successful. Five behaviour centres for primary school students are planned for 2008.

Mr McGowan said yesterday it was unfair for well-behaved students to put up with disruptive and violent classmates. It was also unfair to keep troublemakers in learning environments where they were unhappy. Mr McGowan said many disruptive students had underlying mental-health or emotional problems, learning difficulties or dysfunctional home lives, for which they needed help. "They need specialist help that is not always available in schools so that they can return to a mainstream school, training, employment or a combination of these options,'' Mr McGowan said. "The behaviour centres will offer intensive literacy and numeracy support, a specialised curriculum focusing on problem solving, coping strategies and regulation of behaviour, and individualised school transition plans.''

Yesterday's announcement follows a commitment by Mr McGowan earlier this year to improve the image of public schools. He said he was educated in public schools and believed in them. ``While (troublemakers) make up less than 1 per cent of the total student population, their impact is great,'' he said. ``There is no point expecting teachers to struggle on handling these students because everyone suffers. ``About 25 students are excluded from WA public schools every year, almost all of them secondary students. ``The pressure on teachers, other students and families is intolerable. ``Some kids have a very tough life and they will show behaviour that reflects that. ``I am not targeting them, but I am trying to find an environment that suits them while at the same time making the rest of the school better.''

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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