"All Hail Diversity" Such is the battle cry of the left.
In fact, the Supreme Court found that "diversity" is a "compelling state interest" in its recent ruling on Grutter and Gratz, the Michigan law school admission case. Peter Wood in his National Review editorial after the ruling, points out that this elevation of diversity comes at the expense of individual rights, the very foundation of our Constitution.
Repeat: Diversity is a compelling state interest. In these mild words the Supreme Court has effectively amended the U.S. Constitution. We now live in a nation where the highest court has endorsed the principle of group rights. The "diversity" in question is the idea that Americans are properly seen in relation to each other as members of racial and ethnic groups, and not as individuals who have equal rights before the law.
Since diversity is now a "compelling state interest" we are pursuing and encouraging it in every aspect of our institutions of higher learning, right?
Unless of course, the subject is diversity of thought among the faculty and students.
I refer you to the editorial in the New York Times, Sept. 27, entitled "Lonely Campus Voices", by David Brooks, (registration required.)
"Most good universities have at least one conservative professor on campus. When, for example, some group at Harvard wants to hold a panel discussion on some political matter, it can bring out the political theorist Harvey Mansfield to hold up the rightward end. At Princeton it's Robert George. At Yale it's Donald Kagan."
Ahhh. The "token" conservative.
"Here's what I'm thinking when an outstanding kid comes in," says George, of Princeton. "If the kid applies to one of the top graduate schools, he's likely to be not admitted. Say he gets past that first screen. He's going to face pressure to conform, or he'll be the victim of discrimination. It's a lot harder to hide then than it was as an undergrad."But say he gets through. He's going to run into intense discrimination trying to find a job. But say he lands a tenure-track job. He'll run into even more intense discrimination because the establishment gets more concerned the closer you get to the golden ring. By the time you come up for tenure, you're in your mid-30's with a spouse and a couple of kids. It's the worst time to be uncertain about your career. Can I really take the responsibility of advising a kid to take these kinds of risks?"
The most common advice conservative students get is to keep their views in the closet. Will Inboden was working on a master's degree in U.S. history at Yale when a liberal professor pulled him aside after class and said: "You're one of the best students I've got, and you could have an outstanding career. But I have to caution you: hiring committees are loath to hire political conservatives. You've got to be really quiet."
"Intense discrimination." Where is the outrage? This is a prime example of the hypocrisy of the liberal elite in America today. We will value you, love you, embrace you, protect you, as long as you THINK like we do.
Take the examples of Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, or Condeleeza Rice. All are examples of minorities with great achievements in their fields. Naturally, they're esteemed by the same establishment for whom diversity is a core value to be protected and cherished, right?
Of course not. All are pilloried by the same liberal elites for not towing the party line when it comes to how they THINK.
How bad is it in our colleges and universities today?
Check out the Executive Summary of a report on "Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities" by David Horowitz and Eli Lehrer at Students for Academic Freedom.
In our examinations of over 150 departments and upper-level administrations at 32 elite colleges and universities, the Center found the following:- The overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans we were able to identify at the 32 schools was more than 10 to 1 (1397 Democrats, 134 Republicans).
- Although in the nation at large registered Democrats and Republicans are roughly equal in number, not a single department at a single one of the 32 schools managed to achieve a reasonable parity between the two. The closest any school came to parity was Northwestern University where 80% of the faculty members we identified were registered Democrats who outnumbered registered Republicans by a ratio of 4-1.
Once again we find there is a "hostile environment" for conservatives in academia:
Without further investigation it is not possible to establish with any degree of certainty why this state of affairs has come into existence, but there are many obvious factors that may be said to have contributed to it. Among them is the very exclusion of conservatives from faculty and administrative positions itself. This in itself creates a hostile environment for conservative students contemplating an academic career. This core hostility is amplified by practices that have been incorporated into academic life in the last several decades, including campus speech codes and politicized classrooms – both which represent radical departures from the pre-Sixties academic environment. A comprehensive study by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (available at www.speechcodes.org ) found that over 90 percent of well-known college campuses have speech codes intended to ban and punish politically incorrect, almost always conservative, speech. (Cases available at www.thefire.org.) Student testimonies about in-classroom political indoctrination are available at www.noindoctrination.org.
I don't know about you, but I'm not too excited to send my kids to college and pay for them to be discriminated against, at best, for their conservative views, or indoctrinated, at worst. I'm deadly serious here. I refuse to pay for my kids to be fed a load of liberal bias.
Thankfully, we have a few years to fight back before I face that decision. Students for Academic Freedom has drafted an Academic Bill of Rights they are working to have adopted.
Also, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, (FIRE) has student guides available to inform students of their rights on campus.
We've let the bias in our universities go on too long. Time to stand up for the forgotten diversity, diversity of thought.
DC
Update: Mike Adams at Town Hall apparently had the same thing on his mind today, here. (Satire alert.)
Also, fixed up some stuff from when I was in a rush earlier. :)
Update: Daniel Drezner has a round up of links discussing the Brooks editorial in his post, The Oxymoron of Conservative Academics. (I'm trying to trackback to his post. Apologies in advance if it doesn't work.)
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