The prolific and highly readable Heather MacDonald has produced another incisive examination of American culture. The Diversity Delusion examines a cultural upheaval that eschews excellence for bean-counting. The American university system has been especially hit hard and it does not bode well for American innovation and advancement.
In 288 packed pages, MacDonald provides fact upon fact of a massive fraud. Using the University of California system as an example, she outlines the radical growth of non-teaching bureaucrats. The vast majority being dedicated to all manner of administrators to various diversity based student programs.
From 1998 to 2009, as the UC student population grew 33 percent and tenure-track faculty grew 25 percent, the number of senior administrators grew 125 percent …
MacDonald goes on to give a more detail example from UC Davis where the Diversity mission yielded 28 departments …
not academic departments, but bureaucratic and identity based ones such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center; the Center for African Diaspora Student Success; the Native American Academic Student Success Center; the Middle Easter/South Asian Student Affairs Office; the Woman’s Resources and Research Center; the Undocumented Student Center; Retention Initiatives; the Office of Educational Opportunity and Enrichment Services; and the Center for First-Generation Student Scholars
It should be noted that UC tuition is northwards of $12,000 per year and, pleading poverty, the UC system has a tough time providing enough actual classes so students can graduate within four years. Yet it pours millions of dollars, with no signs of abating, into the expanding black hole of diversity bureaucracy.
Probably the most startling thing I read was how the hard sciences are being bullied and threatened for not being “diverse enough”. Like the witch-prickers of the 17th century, today’s diversity bureaucrat can find “systemic bias” in any department whose membership doesn’t reflect whatever demographics are chosen on the pricker’s whim. No excuse is accepted for a science department pleading cannot find enough qualified “diversity hires”. Such failure is taken as proof that science itself is to blame, it’s “hierarchical nature … exacerbates gender bias and stereotypes”.
MacDonald also covers how this fraudulent ideology has spilled out of the campuses into culture. She covers the James Damore affair at Google and Google’s toxic identity-politic culture. Also, how UPenn law professor Amy Wax and USD law professor Larry Alexander were burned at the stake, not for what they actually wrote, but by how the leftwing crybullies interpreted their writings.
If there was one thing I found lacking is that at the end of this book Ms. MacDonald offered no advice on how to counter this dangerous ideology.
Maybe she is hoping those of us still bitterly clinging to bourgeoisie values will band together and insist on change.
featured image, background by Victory Girls Darleen Click, book cover St. Martin’s Press
How to counter this? First, it’s necessary to understand how this happened. One is ideological – the development of “New Left” thought (Gramsci, Frankfurt School, post-modernism) as a response to failure of Marxism on economic grounds. A second crucial thing – rise of federal subsidy of universities through Pell Grants and student loan programs. Universities became expert at extracting these funds, building armies of administrators (hence raising costs, thus tuitions, thus federal subsidies). Administration is where the tenured PhDs go now, and classes are taught by poorly paid adjuncts, freeing more funds for administration. How to fight back?
1. Eliminate state funding for universities… Or at least the humanities, which now are poisoned. Or at least make funding contingent on eliminating anti-American radical studies. GOP held state legislatures could do this…an important start.
2. Work to end federal subsidy, 100% of it. That will be a longer battle. But colleges must offer a product – education – that buyers are willing to pay for. Radical studies would fail under these circumstances as they do not prepare anyone to do anything other than be a radical.
3. Fight new left ideology in all forms, as if we are in a life or death struggle, because we are. These people are following in footsteps of philosophy professor Abimael Guzman. Their ideas lead to the same place. If readers do not know who he is, now is a good time to start learning.
Here’s another possible approach, again at the state level where action might still be possible:
The left has been expert at taking over the administration of universities. Either we reverse this soon, or we lose. They’ll set the intellectual basis for the next 100 years. The dysfunctionality that results will put America in the dustbin of history.
GWB says: it’s “hierarchical nature … exacerbates gender bias and stereotypes”
Reality is often heirarchical. (More appropriate term would be “structured”, but language is one of those patriarchy things too, so I’ll hush up now.)
SFC D says: Way back around 1986, I worked for a very small (8 employee) company in SE Idaho that built custom furniture. I overheard a lady from the Department of Economic Security talking to the owner about our “diversity plan” how we went about hiring minorities. Owner looks her square in the eye and says “we don’t hire minorities”. Lady audibly gasps and turns red, screams “WHY NOT?” Boss tells her “Go look around. This is small-town Idaho. There are no minorities. If there were, we’d hire them”.
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