Diversity

Thursday

Christopher J. Scalia

Diversifying democracy

In 1790, George Washington wrote that “the establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment, for promoting human happiness, by reasonable compact, in civil Society.” Today, Yascha Mounk has reassessed Washington’s words. He proposes in his new book The Great Experiment that many Western nations are now conducting their own experiments. Never have so many nations tried to establish such diverse democracies, regimes that grant citizens of so many colors and creeds the same freedoms, opportunities and responsibilities. Mounk, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the founder of the Substack publication Persuasion, is both hopeful and pragmatic about the experiment’s outcomes.

mounk

Sunday

Benjamin H. Barton

How the Supreme Court lost its real diversity

If you followed the nominations of Brett Kavanaugh and Merrick Garland, or the news after Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, you might have concluded that the country has never been more divided on what makes a good Supreme Court justice. Kavanaugh’s hearings were among the most divisive and brutal in history, but he at least had a hearing: Garland’s nomination was dead on arrival in the Senate. The selection of justices has become a preeminent political issue.

court

Thursday

J. Scott Turner

Too many scientists spoil the job market

In January, the American Association for the Advancement of Science released its 2021 annual report on diversity equity and inclusion, Nurturing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Scientific Enterprise. The message? Those who are non-white, non-male, non-straight, etc., are apparently being barred from exploring science’s “endless frontier.” Such a thing could only come about if the sciences were governed by a kind of Jim Crow. For the good of science, this needs urgent correction. The AAAS will point the way. The claim seems odd.

Monday

Kenny Xu

Harvard’s diversity disgrace

In 2014, the non-profit Students for Fair Admissions filed a lawsuit against Harvard University, alleging discrimination against Asian Americans in its admissions process — discrimination resulting from Harvard’s stated commitment to “a diverse class.” After defeats at the District and Court of Appeals level, the suit has arrived at the foot of the United States Supreme Court. The case will be argued in the 2022 term. Harvard’s reputation is not all that’s at stake. The case threatens to bring down the entire system of race-based affirmative action that dominates college admissions. Looking at the numbers, it’s easy to see why Students for Fair Admissions believe they have a case.

harvard

Monday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Feminism has failed us

I’ve lost count of how many seminars I’ve had to sit through on Diversity & Inclusion, how many times I’ve been asked for my preferred pronouns and expected to discuss what I think ‘bringing my whole self to work’ really means. Conservatives mock these practices and complain that our lives seem to be dictated by a new moral order to which we did not consent. But we’re missing the forest for the trees. The problem with virtue signaling goes far beyond its annoying and unwelcome intrusions into our lives. We have been utterly hoodwinked. Or at least, I was. Sitting in my bathroom last week in the middle of my third miscarriage, blood, tears and expletives pouring out of me, I felt frustrated and stressed out.

progress

Saturday

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

The American dream has no time for offal

You can get goat in parts of New England. Consumers of Portuguese origin create a market unparalleled elsewhere in the US. In Boston, as I recall, Savenor’s used to sell camel and kangaroo. Few meats are too un-American for New York City. Ottomanelli, purveyors to whatever is left of the Four Hundred, still has venison of the quality they sold to the Upper East Side in the Gilded Age. Los Paisanos in Brooklyn stocks alligator, turtle and caribou. But the great days of the 1950s, when a club in New York served porcupine, caribou, muskrat and armadillo, are fled. With the closing of the American mind has come the narrowing of American appetites. Americans’ self-image is of enterprise, pioneering, innovation, adventure and the call of the wild.

offal

Tuesday

Arsalan Mohammad

The end of the awards ceremony

‘People of color were snubbed in major categories,’ announced Ricky Gervais, during his final kamikaze stint hosting the 78th Golden Globe awards in January 2020. ‘Nothing we can do about that, Hollywood Foreign Press are all very racist.’ Gervais’s words haunt the HFPA this week. The Hollywood institution behind the annual Golden Globes awards is floundering beneath an industry-wide wave of condemnation and cancellation, that culminated on Monday with NBC announcing they won’t be screening the  2022 edition.

awards

Wednesday

Dominic Green

Hollywood’s transrace hypocrisy

It is an article of fashionable faith that genetic differences in sex are meaningless and malleable, but genetic differences in race are so profound and meaningful that they must not be tinkered with at all, even though race, we are told, is a ‘social construct’. Hence it is positively progressive to sneak a cheeky penis into a women’s changing room, providing the penis is attached to a ‘trans woman’. But it was despicably racist of the disgraced professor Jessica Krug, who was born white and Jewish, to have masqueraded as a woman of color.The gaps in this logic are so big that you could drive a bus through them, whether you’re sitting at the back or the front.

hollywood

Wednesday

Will Lloyd

The Oscars and the triumph of Social Justice Realism

Today, politics is show business and show business is politics. Last week the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new efforts to improve inclusion institutionally and for the Oscars themselves. A task force has been created to come up with new inclusion standards for Oscar eligibility by the end of July. The Academy’s president Dawn Hudson said: ‘The need to address this issue is urgent. To that end, we will amend — and continue to examine — our rules and procedures to ensure that all voices are heard and celebrated.’We have traveled a long way from 2003. Then, when Michael Moore made an overtly political acceptance speech about George W. Bush, he was forced off the stage as a result.

bong joon-ho oscars

Monday

Samuel J. Abrams

Viewpoint diversity includes conservative thought

Higher education is dominated by liberal professors and progressive impulses. Conservative professors like me are often apprehensive about teaching in the dominant method, lecture based classes. It’s in the humble seminar, with students and professor debating around a table, that viewpoint diversity can thrive, and discussions of conservative thought survive.Colleagues tell me that they are regularly afraid of the scenario when their class spirals out of control and blows up. In the safe-space, trigger warning, micro-aggression climate of the campus, a professor’s intentions and statements are easily mischaracterized.

viewpoint diversity

Monday

Lawrence M. Mead

Diversity means culture, not race 

Americans have long thought that they are no different from other people, only freer and more fortunate. We pride ourselves on living independent lives in which we work out our personal destiny. We wish that everyone had these opportunities. But that individualist style of life is far less universal than most people think, and today it has come into question both at home and abroad. To recognize and address the reality of cultural difference is the leading challenge of our time. Individualism means daring to pursue our own goals and values. That culture is unique to the Western world: Europe and its offshoots, including America. It made Europe and then the United States unusually rich and powerful, so that they came to lead the world.

culture

Sunday

Lionel Shriver

When diversity means uniformity

I’d been suffering under the misguided illusion that the purpose of mainstream publishers like Penguin Random House was to sell and promote fine writing. A colleague’s forwarded email has set me straight. Sent to a literary agent, presumably this letter was also fired off to the agents of the entire Penguin Random House stable. The email cites the publisher’s ‘new company-wide goal’: for ‘both our new hires and the authors we acquire to reflect UK society by 2025.’ (Gotta love that shouty boldface.) ‘This means we want our authors and new colleagues to reflect the UK population taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability.