Townhall
Liberal
Students Have a Funny Definition of 'Diversity'
Jonah
Goldberg
Feb
21, 2014
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the philosophy courses, people. Oh, and we're going to be shuttering
the political science, religion and pre-law departments too. We'll
keep some of the English and history folks on for a while longer, but
they should probably keep their resumes handy.
Because,
you see, they are of no use anymore. We have the answers to the big
questions, so why keep pretending there's anything left to discuss?
At
least that's where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems
to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton
professor, Cornel West, and a famous right-wing Princeton professor,
Robert George, to have a debate. The two men are friends, and by all
accounts they had an utterly civil exchange of ideas. But that only
made the whole thing even more outrageous.
"What
really bothered me is, the whole idea is that at a liberal arts
college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion," Ching
told the Daily Gazette, the school's newspaper. "I don't think
we should be tolerating [George's] conservative views because that
dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society."
Swarthmore
must be so proud.
Over
at Harvard, another young lady has similar views. Harvard Crimson
editorial writer Sandra Y.L. Korn recently called for getting rid of
academic freedom in favor of something called "academic
justice."
"If
our university community opposes racism, sexism and heterosexism, why
should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the
name of 'academic freedom'?" Korn asks.
Helpfully,
she answers her own question: "When an academic community
observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should
ensure that this research does not continue."
One
could easily dismiss these students as part of that long and glorious
American tradition of smart young people saying stupid things. As
Oscar Wilde remarked, "In America the young are always ready to
give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of
their inexperience."
But
we all know that this nonsense didn't spring ex nihilo from their
imaginations. As Allan Bloom showed a quarter century ago in "The
Closing of the American Mind," these ideas are taught.
Indeed,
we are now up to our knees in this Orwellian bilge. Diversity means
conformity.
Let
me invoke personal privilege by citing a slightly dated example. When
the Los Angeles Times picked me up as a columnist in 2005, Barbra
Streisand publicly canceled her subscription in protest (I'm proud to
say). You see, Streisand's friend, iconic left-wing columnist Robert
Scheer, had been let go. And I was one of the new columnists brought
on board. This was an outrage...
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the rest of the article at Townhall
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