The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture

This is an important book on a vastly important subject: the destruction of our system of higher education and the fact that the forces at work there are now reaching into the wider realm of American society and spreading the corruption into new areas. The author uses an interesting metaphor. She suggests that the University of California (or an individual campus) is now two institutions: Cal 1 and Cal 2. Cal 1 is the great university of the past, built upon the development and transmission of knowledge, the amelioration of human ignorance, the reduction of disease, the expansion of the human imagination and the dispersion of knowledge to corners of society that previously lived in darkness. Cal 2 is something altogether different: a vast and vastly expensive bureaucracy subscribing to the beliefs that identity politics are paramount, western history is a trail of tears involving victimization of the marginalized, that patriarchy reigns and lives to despoil the lives and spirits of women and minorities, that the university represents a culture of rape and dominance and that the university's principal role is to reduce the oppression, comfort the oppressed and bring them to the forefront of power and influence. Cal 2 has now largely supplanted Cal 1, particularly in the humanities and soft social sciences and the apparatus that leads that process is in place to intimidate presidents and chancellors and hold a damoclean sword above their heads that threatens them with charges of racism, homophobism, heteronormativity and so on which will destroy them if they should be so bold as to challenge the status quo. Those charges will be applied ruthlessly, without regard to fact or logic since facts and logic are in disrepute following the depredations of the French Nietzscheans and other voices of postmodernism and poststructuralism. One might call this neoRousseauan, given Rousseau's contempt for civilization and the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but Rousseau is a dead white male and is to be silenced along with his brother voices from the past.This is a problem. It is a problem for many reasons, not just because it is destroying higher education, but because it has, at the end of the day, simply not worked. Minorities are not thriving. Their test scores remain lower than, e.g., Asians and whites; their graduation rates are lower. Their indebtedness is higher. Their pass rate on the Bar exam lags behind, and so on. The solution has not been to raise expectations or (Heaven forfend) question the incidence of single-parent households, out-of-wedlock births or the injunction to not 'act white'. The 'solution' has been to further reduce expectations, to remove such obstacles as standardized tests and conventional methods of instruction. Again, this has not worked, and so the diversity bureaucracy (or 'industry' as it is now often termed) is expanded beyond all reasonable bounds. Fifty million more dollars of endowment and a dozen more deanlets, deanlings, associate vice provosts, directors and vice-chancellors just might do the trick.The book consists of four broad sections: Race, Gender, The Bureaucracy and The Purpose of the University. The arguments are factual, logical and rational. There are a few major takeaways: the processes at work here are truly delusional; the processes at work here are incredibly expensive though there is precious little evidence of their success; the processes at work here are expanding rather than contracting, and, perhaps most important, the processes are hurting the people they are most designed to help (except for the fact that the processes are creating a bureaucracy that provides a plethora of well-paying jobs for those operating what is, ultimately, a cruel scam).I have read Heather MacDonald's work in the past and it is scrupulously fair, informative and on point. That is certainly true of this more extended study of a subject that she has addressed on several previous occasions.The question that haunts me is how and why we have permitted all of this to happen? Part of the reason is that the academic leaders of the past have been replaced by corporatists prepared to scrounge tuition dollars and protect their own positions at any cost. These individuals advance themselves by creating new programs and expanding the number of their 'direct reports'. "Diversity" is an area that will always go unchallenged by sympathetic faculty regardless of the fecklessness of the activities or, indeed, the detrimental effects on the instructional budget, the internal research budget and faculty salaries and faculty hires. The corporatists know that they can never defend courageous counter actions by principles, facts or logic because we are at war and the cui bono forces within the industry will seek victory by any means and at any cost. There are also doubtless a number of individuals who are 'true believers' and some who seek to signal their virtue through bien pensant actions and stances. The delusion may not result in positive, authentic results but it soothes and salves egos to a considerable degree. It is also fair (but 'outrageous' to say) that some portion of the student activism in this area is motivated by a desire to bypass requirements that might be in the students' best interests but are not part of their desired lifestyle. Calculus is difficult; why can't I call myself an engineer and not be required to study it? It's racist and sexist anyway because it was created by Leibniz and Newton.It is fascinating to see the ideological contradictions at work here. One extended discussion concerns the 'rape culture' industry and the manner in which it argues, on one side, that women should be as promiscuous as men, as sexually indiscriminate as men and, thus, validate the claim that gender differences are not biological but cultural. At the same time, these women cry out for a culture of legal/sexual contracts, of kangaroo courts that deny the possibility of cross examination, legal representation or the kinds of evidentiary requirements consistent with the laws that obtain one inch beyond the university campus. We have both Babylon and a neoVictorian fainting-couch/ vapor-laden construct at the same time.The book is sad, frightening, enraging and utterly riveting. It is not particularly enjoyable to see one of the principal institutions of our society brought to the brink of destruction, particularly one that has served to utterly alter lives, hearts and minds and bring both titanic achievements and great social mobility. There may be hope in the fact that insanity generally does not persist forever. There is certainly evidence that students have fled from self-corrupted majors or, e.g., gone to new emphasis areas such as Creative Writing, that valorize art, form, craft, imagination and, sometimes, wisdom. When the tuition payers finally rise up in revolt it may catch the attention of the corporatists.Highly recommended. Every person who is concerned with the state of higher education should read this book.

This is a must read for everyone.

Another great read by Heather Mac Donald! She is well researched and knowledgeable on the subject. Be all you can or won't be in today's colleges, universities, even those ivy league ones. CRT, inclusiveness, safe spaces, are now available.

As in my “intro”, this book should be required reading for ALL faculty and administrators on US campuses. I literally read it in one sitting - a rarity for me to do with a non-fiction book. A cliché most certainly but I have an interest in this sector for several reasons. One is as part of a past multi-career life, I served as a tenured professor at a large US SE university. Second I just revisited my own effete New England campus for my 50th reunion that was prefaced with my letters to fund raisers “why” my donations have and will remain minimal citing many of the author’s themes along with attending alumni lectures that attempted to justify so much of what is examined in this book.Ms Mac Donald adroitly puts “facts” to the fiction, failures and misdirection of so much of the nonsense now occurring on campuses (and very expensive failures too) instead of the actual work of education. Included are data driven critiques of the never ending quest for diversity (and THE big business of this venture), the often destructive nature of these policies, the extrapolations to society at large of this non-stop emphasis, examining the “rape culture” that is said to be pervasive and so forth. And sadly in many ways it is a poignant eulogy for higher education in our country with nostalgic remembrances and allusions to the loss of what is now discarded from curricula given its centuries of formulations of bodies of academic work by a “ patriarchy of white heteronormative males ( I think I got the nomenclature right ?). The writer certainly has a strong base for this comparative lament given her own personal education pedigree of elite universities - Yale, Cambridge and Stanford.I have a friend who is now a trustee at my old college and I will recommend that he do just this - ask the faculty and administrators that he meets in those lofty interactions. But the predictable reaction ? I say they’ll recoil with crossed fingers and garlic cloves around their necks with a silver spike ready to go In fact I would expect THE same type of reaction to this book “on campus” as Ms Macdonald received in her attempts to speak in the University of California system as she describes. She too will be “Amy Wax-ed” or whacked ( read the book ) but this time with book burnings of her work on campus. It would be so consistent of current campus times and the hypocritical respect for diversity of thought and tolerance supposedly resident in these environments.PS - Heck I bet I get “censored” by the Amazon reviewers frankly for this review. That too is a manifestation of the carry overs from current education directions on campus creeping outside the ivy walls. I would imagine I have “micro aggressive” words and thought so push the “delete” button.

This is eye-opening. I've always felt as a white male who up until recently identified with purely left-wing ideoligy felt that I can't comprehend race and gender biases and that they must exist to such an extent for so many people in minority groups to feel oppressed, but what if the invisible oppression is merely that? What if it doesn't exist? What are the causes for relative "failure" by minority groups and are we really trying to help them? Are they really trying to help themselves? Can differences in groups be attributed by innate differences in those groups rather than due to direct oppression from the outside Word? Is it time to demolish the idea of groups and celebrate individual responsibility? Have we become so afraid to be racist in today's world that the only safe way to live is be racist enough to identify and favour those groups we don't belong to. I'm only half way through, but already this is something I would have benefitted from 10 years ago when I was trying to understand the supposed oppression we face.

ein wirklich wichtiger Insiderbericht ist hier zu lesen - so überauß politisch korrekt geht es an amerikanischen Universitäten zu, ob UCLA, Berkely, Yale, Harvard, Columbia - wo das Matratzenmädel Emma S. ihre Show abzog, wie McDonald zu berichten weiss, oder ihre eigene Denunzierung als "Faschistin", als sie einer Uni-Einladung zu einer Rede folgt und von der Polizei geschützt werden musste. Wir sollten lernen und aufpassen, dass unsere Universitäten noch Orte zum Austausch freier Meinungen bleiben und nicht des "pampering", wie McDonald schreibt, des Verwöhnprogramms, mit dem privilegierte Studentengruppen umsorgt werden, sobald sie einen Verdacht auf "Diskriminierung" äußern. Für mich als ehemaligen Anti-Apartheid-AKtivisten hat sich die Spirale von einem schlechten Extrem zum anderen gedreht. Unbedingt lesen!

その前から気にはなっていたのだが、このテーマの重大さに気が付かされたのは、昨年読んだdouglas murrayの「Madness of Crowds」の時だろうか。かなり抑えられた筆致の中で、Diversity groupやsocial justice warriors (SJW)が英米の社会で振るう猛威が指摘されていた。ほぼ同時期に、いつもフォローしている英国の政治哲学者John grayもこのdiversity/social justice warriorsの暴走を指摘するエッセイをいくつかの場所で発表していた。もっともjohn gray 自身はこの猛威はあくまでも英米に限定された現象ととらえているようだが。はたしてそうなのだろうか。このような現象の背後に存在する彼我の風土の違いには着目せずに、目新しい横文字の移入にファッションとして飛びつく日本はまた別種の腐臭をはなつはずだ。だいぶ昔に「Closing of the American mind」という作品を読んだのだが、もう少しアメリカの現状を知りたくてこの作品を読んでみた。今回読んだこの作品だが、これはあくまでも論争のための書だ。書き方や言葉の使い方はかなり挑発的で、揶揄する形でこのSJW の抱える矛盾に切り込んでいる。著者はもともとは学者のようだが、歯に布を着せぬ論調での言葉の使い方は外国人にはちょっとわかりにくい部分もある。ただし本書では、LGBTまで対象を広げることはなく、もっぱらraceとfeminismが大学で陥ってしまった袋小路が焦点とされている。本書で、対象とされたのは、主に現在のアメリカの大学だ。驚くべきことに、SJWは大学教育、大学行政にしっかりと地位を確立しているのだ。大学（院）入試や教員の採用で横行するethnic group（対象はhispanicとblack african）や女性の特別扱いは、ここまでとは驚かさせてくれる。この特別扱いは現実との大きな乖離に直面しており、結果としては大学や学生の教育水準の低下や機能不全を引き起こしている。もっとも学問水準の低下自体は、ブルジョア文化への抵抗や文化的な違いの観点という名目から正当化されていく。大学における「rape culture」の議論の中で提示された「キャンパスにおける新ヴィクトリア主義」とはfeminismがたどり着いたグロテスクな矛盾をよく表している。また意見を異にするものに対する非寛容的な攻撃は「紅衛兵」が荒れ狂った文化大革命を想起させる。そこでは過去との対話による知識の伝達の場としての「大学」なるものは存在しない。存在するのは、歪んだレンズにより「誤った言説（false narratives)」と断定された考え方への性急な断罪だけなのだ。２１世紀版の「人民裁判」だ。暴力と権力関係をすべての現象の背景に見出していこうというSJWそしてポスコロの発想はある一面の真理への光を照射してくれるのだが、この側面のみから過去、現在をすべてを断罪・解釈し未来を創ろうという単純な発想は、現実の複雑さや曖昧さの独善的な捨象そしてナルシスティックな正当化につながり、結果として意見を異にする他者への寛容性は失われていく。寛容という価値は、むしろ「抑圧的寛容」として否定されるものなのだ。そこに待ち受けているのは新しい全体主義社会だろう。この全体主義のエートスを基盤から生み出し支えるものとして肥大化しているのが、大学における「diversocracy」だ。これは著者の造語だろうが、大学における意識の改革のためdiversity重視や当局のアリバイ作りの名目のもとで数多くつくられた組織なのだ。これらの大学の組織は大学の外に「業」として存在する様々なコンサルタントやセミナー業者と連携し、その科学的妥当性や効果が疑わしい研修、セミナー、授業を教員、学生に強制していく。軍産複合体ならぬ「学産複合体」というわけだ。もともとアメリカの大学はそんなもんだとの理解はあったが、もはや「アメリカ」という価値へのコンセンサスが失われつつあるようだ。いやアメリカというのはもともとその種の「過激派」だったのかもしれない。そしてSJWの発想は大学から外の世界、企業にまで及びつつある。

Front-footed and solidly referenced academic argument on a subject that makes this a thoroughly depressing read.

A shocking account of what damage ideology can do if let loose on schools and campuses.If a person is not up to meet the challenges of life, the public is not to be blamed! Sometimes feeling uncomfortable is an essential part of growing up.