Diversity has become corporatized on American campuses, with scores of bureaucrats and administrators accentuating different pedigrees and<\/p>\n ancestries. That\u2019s odd, because diversity \u00a0no longer means \u201cvariety\u201d or \u201cpoints of difference,\u201d in the way it used to be defined.<\/p>\n Instead, diversity has become an industry synonymous with orthodoxy and intolerance, especially in its homogeneity of political thought.<\/p>\n When campuses sloganeer \u201ccelebrate diversity,\u201d that does not mean they encourage\u00a0all sorts of political views. If it did, faculties and student groups would better reflect the U.S.\u2019s political realities and might fall roughly into two equal groups: liberal and conservative.<\/p>\n Do colleges routinely invite graduation speakers who are skeptical of man-made global warming, and have reservations about present abortion laws, gay marriage, or illegal immigration \u2014 if only for the sake of ensuring diverse views?<\/p>\n Nor does diversity mean consistently ensuring that institutions should reflect \u201cwhat America looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n If it did, all sorts of problems could follow. As we see in the NBA and NFL, for example, many of our institutions do not always reflect the proportional racial and ethnic makeup of America. Do we really want all institutions to weigh diversity rather than merit so that coveted spots reflect the race and gender percentages of American society?<\/p>\n Does anyone care that for decades the diverse state of California\u2019s three most powerful elected officials have been most undiverse? Representative Nancy Pelosi, Senator Barbara Boxer, and Senator Dianne Feinstein are all mature women, quite liberal, very wealthy, married to rich professionals or entrepreneurs, and all once lived within commuting distance of each other in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n Is the University of California, Berkeley, ethnically diverse? If it were, Asian students might have to be turned away, given that the percentage of Asian students at UC Berkeley is about three times as great as the percentage of Asian residents in California\u2019s general population.<\/p>\n Gender disparity is absolutely stunning on American campuses. Women now earn about 61 percent of all associate degrees and 57 percent of all bachelor\u2019s degrees. With such disproportionate gender representation, do we need outreach offices on campus to weigh maleness in admissions? Should college presidents investigate whether the campus has become an insidiously hostile place for men?<\/p>\n Diversity, Inc. is also based on a number of other shaky fundamental assumptions. Race, gender, and politics are supposed to count far more in a diverse society than other key differences. Yet in a multiracial nation in which the president of the United States and almost half the Supreme Court are not white males, class considerations that transcend race and gender often provide greater privilege.<\/p>\n Is the daughter of Hillary Clinton in greater need of affirmative action or diversity initiatives than the children of the Oklahoma diaspora who settled in Bakersfield? So-called \u201cwhite privilege\u201d might certainly describe the elite networks of insider contacts who promote the scions of Al Gore, Chris Matthews, or Warren Buffett. But how about the son of an unemployed Appalachian coal miner? Not so much.<\/p>\n If ethnic, rather than class, pedigrees provide an edge, how do we ascertain them in today\u2019s melting-pot culture? Does the one-quarter Latino student, the recent arrival from Jamaica, or the fourth-generation Japanese American deserve special consideration as \u201cdiverse\u201d? And if so, over whom? The Punjabi American? The Arab American? The gay rich kid? The coal miner\u2019s daughter? Or the generic American who chooses not to broadcast his profile?<\/p>\n Does Diversity, Inc. rely on genetic testing, family documents, general appearance, accented names, trilled pronunciation, or just personal assurance to pass judgment on who should be advantaged in any measurement of diversity?<\/p>\n In such an illiberal, tribally obsessed, and ideologically based value system, it is not hard to see why and how careerists such as Senator Elizabeth Warren and activist Ward Churchill were able to fabricate helpful Native American ancestries.<\/p>\n Diversity came into vogue after affirmative action became unworkable in the 1980s. Given the multiplicity of ethnicities, huge influxes of new immigrants, and a growing rate of intermarriage, it became almost impossible to adjudicate historical grievances and dole out legal remedies. So just creating \u201cdiversity\u201d \u2014 without much worry over how to define it \u2014 avoided the contradictions.<\/p>\n But diversity is not only incoherent; it is ironic. On a zero-sum campus short of resources, the industry of diversity and related \u201cstudies\u201d classes that focus on gender or racial differences and grievances crowd out exactly the sort of disciplines that provide the skills \u2014 mastery of languages, literature, science, engineering, business, and math \u2014 that best prep graduates for a shot at well-compensated careers.<\/p>\n Red\/blue state divides have never been more acrimonious. The number of foreign-born citizens is at a record high. The global status of the United States has never been shakier. To meet all these existential challenges, American institutions \u2014 the university especially \u2014 would be wise to stress unity and academic rigor.<\/p>\n People in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq certainly championed their ethnic differences in lieu of embracing concord and ethnically and religiously blind meritocracy.<\/p>\n Tragically, these are also examples of where the logic of privileging differences, and dividing and judging people by the way they look and what they believe, ultimately ends up.<\/p>\n Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.<\/em>\u00a0His latest book is<\/em>\u00a0The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0published this spring by<\/em>\u00a0Bloomsbury Books.<\/em>\u00a0You can reach him by e-mailing\u00a0<\/em>author@victorhanson.com<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In today’s divided society, universities would be wise to stress unity and academic rigor. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Diversity has become corporatized on American campuses, with scores of bureaucrats and administrators accentuating different pedigrees and ancestries. That\u2019s odd, because diversity \u00a0no longer means \u201cvariety\u201d or \u201cpoints of difference,\u201d in the way it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[79,120],"tags":[132,84,1023,570,1042,80,1018],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Po","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-rise-of-faux-diversity\/","url_meta":{"origin":7030,"position":0},"title":"The Rise of Faux Diversity","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas In\u00a0Fisher vs. University of Texas, the Supreme Court heard legal challenges to the University of Texas\u2019s admissions policies, which allow consideration of an applicant\u2019s race in order to promote \u201cdiversity\u201d among the school\u2019s students. Such racial preferences are widespread in university admissions. In 80 percent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7258,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/one-cheer-for-the-schuette-decision\/","url_meta":{"origin":7030,"position":1},"title":"One Cheer for the Schuette Decision","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Front Page Magazine\u00a0 Many conservatives are applauding the recent Supreme Court\u00a0Schuette\u00a0decision upholding the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban racial preferences. As Charles Krauthammer\u00a0writes, the 2003\u00a0Grutter\u00a0decision, which like\u00a0Schuette\u00a0did not ban racial preferences altogether, was correct: \u201cThe people should decide.\u00a0The people responded accordingly. Three years\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9430,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/diversity-historys-pathway-to-chaos\/","url_meta":{"origin":7030,"position":2},"title":"Diversity: History\u2019s Pathway to Chaos","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"America\u2019s successful melting pot should not be replaced with discredited salad-bowl separatism. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Emphasizing diversity has been the pitfall, not the strength, of nations throughout history. The Roman Empire worked as long as Iberians, Greeks, Jews, Gauls, and myriad other African, Asian, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5154,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-panhandlers-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":7030,"position":3},"title":"A Panhandler’s World","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Where the monies flow from university coffers. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers If you have a child in college or are yourself a college graduate, university panhandlers are constantly pestering you for money. Public institutions have seen state-money diminish, and private schools are competing fiercely to offer students the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5278,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fighting-for-free-speech\/","url_meta":{"origin":7030,"position":4},"title":"Fighting for Free Speech","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"FIRE's guide to defending student rights on campuses by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers If you have a child in college the most important book you both should read is available free of charge. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has just released on-line its\u00a0FIRE's Guide to Free\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":800,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/elizabeth-warren-and-the-frauds-of-diversity\/","url_meta":{"origin":7030,"position":5},"title":"Elizabeth Warren and the Frauds of Diversity","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine For anyone familiar with the American university and its gospel of multicultural diversity, the revelation that Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren exploited her 1\/32 Cherokee ancestry to pass as a minority is a dog-bites-man story. For decades now universities have depended on the superficially\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7032,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions\/7032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Americophile](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/600px-Education_-_Red_Grad_Hat.png?resize=240%2C240&ssl=1\")