Is Diversity an Enemy of Excellence?

Intellectual Takeout   . . . "Diversity is irrelevant to academe’s main purpose"

"The fundamental objection to diversity initiatives is that they have nothing whatever to do with the core mission of a university: which is intellectual excellence in the pursuit of truth via teaching and research. D&I efforts might still be acceptable if they did not interfere with the university’s core mission. Ancillaries like health care, dining facilities, and (perhaps) sports do not compromise education or research. But, is “diversity and inclusion” like that? No. Increasingly D&I conflicts with intellectual excellence.

"In addition to the political litmus tests feared by Dean Flier, diversity and inclusion of identity groups sometimes means exclusion and uniformity of ideas — and diversity advocates sometimes admit it. Identity diversity is very far from idea diversity. The drive for diversity can also limit rigor and dumb down difficult courses. The Canning and Reddick article provides a couple of examples.

"These two authors claim that the academy is not “a space of objective assessment” especially for “those on the margins.” Rather than defend this claim with any kind of empirical argument, they recite the tale of Carmen Mitchell, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Health Management at the university of Louisville.

"D&I evidently helped Ms. Mitchell, who affirms that “Nearly all of the most supportive and helpful faculty members who helped steer me toward a Ph.D. were women (of many races).” In other words, her personal leg-up justifies the D&I program. Reacting to a comment by a prominent critic of “diversity statements,” she writes,

"Back in September, Heather MacDonald, criticizing the new requirement, asked readers to consider whether Albert Einstein would have been hired into a faculty position if he had to provide an EDI statement, implying that it may have been a distraction from his work as a scientist." . . .