This Professor Resigned Rather Than Go to Diversity Training

"It's hard to figure out what's more appalling about this episode: the ease with which powerful faculty members can strip their colleagues of their ability to do their jobs just because those colleagues exercise free speech and don't sign on to their ideological priorities—or the increasing power of bloated university bureaucracies, especially "diversity" bureaucracies over every facet of existence at a university that is supposed to be devoted to the life of the mind."

Weekly Standard

Paul Griffiths was an esteemed professor at Duke before facing disciplinary action.

You're in your early 60s, and you hold an endowed-chair professorship at Duke University's prestigious divinity school, where your specialty is Catholic theology, and where the subjects of the courses you teach include a range of religious and secular philosophers from Augustine of Hippo to Wittgenstein. You've also written 10 scholarly books as sole author and seven more as co-author or editor. Your endowed chair is the capstone of a distinguished academic career that includes teaching stints at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

"And then you get a mass email—in early February of this year—from one of your younger professor-colleagues. It says:

On behalf of the Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee, I strongly urge you to participate in the Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training planned for March 4 and 5. We have secured funding from the Provost to provide this training free to our community and we hope that this will be a first step in a longer process of working to ensure that DDS is an institution that is both equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture. … We recognize that it is a significant commitment of time; we also believe it will have great dividends for our community. … Duke Divinity School will host a Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training on March 4 and 5, 2017, 8:30—5 pm both days. Participants should plan to attend both full days of training.

On behalf of the Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee, I strongly urge you to participate in the Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training planned for March 4 and 5. We have secured funding from the Provost to provide this training free to our community and we hope that this will be a first step in a longer process of working to ensure that DDS is an institution that is both equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture. … We recognize that it is a significant commitment of time; we also believe it will have great dividends for our community. … Duke Divinity School will host a Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training on March 4 and 5, 2017, 8:30—5 pm both days. Participants should plan to attend both full days of training.

"Uh-oh, a "training" session. Anyone who's ever worked for an entity with a human resources department knows what that's going to be like: two very, very long days of "workshops" in which overpaid "training" hucksters—sorry, I meant consultants—haul out the PowerPoint slides and waste your time with yada-yada about multiculturalism, structural racism, microagressions, and whatever else is in the social-justice-warrior weapons cache these days. The email continued:" . . .

Cartoon added by TD