Elite universities have embarked on a quest for diversity. They have devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to obtaining a diverse faculty. Many universities now require applicants for faculty positions or promotion to file diversity statements — statements attesting to the author’s commitment to diversity and the actions he has taken or will take to advance it.
At my institution, the administration has created a 48-page guidance document entitled Diversifying the Georgetown Faculty. Undergraduates must take two courses in Engaging Diversity to graduate. The law school requires a course that teaches students “to think critically about the law’s claim to neutrality and the law’s differential effects on subordinated groups, including those identified by race, gender, indigeneity and class.” The university has an Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Affirmative Action, headed by the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. The medical school has its own Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The cover story of the current edition of Georgetown Business, the business school’s magazine, is ‘Taking the DEI Journey‘. The law school has hired an outside consulting firm to guide its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategic Planning Process. Typing the word ‘diversity’ in the university’s search engine produces a flood of hits from every point of the school’s website. Broadcast emails inform us of every new diversity initiative.
It is as though elite universities have had an epiphany. They have seen the light of diversity and become wholly dedicated true believers. What accounts for this?
The answer is found on page 311 of volume 438 of US Reports — the page of the Supreme Court decision in Regents of University of California v Bakke, on which Justice Lewis Powell identified “the attainment of a diverse student body” as an interest that could override the Equal Protection Clause’s prohibition on race-based decision-making.
“No diversity effort of which I am aware has ever asked applicants or candidates about their thoughts, as opposed to their demographic identities”
Diversity can mean many things. In the academic context, it means only one: increasing the number of students and faculty from a specified set of “under-represented” demographic groups — African Americans, Hispanics, women, people of colour, LGBTQ sexual orientation. It definitely does not refer to diversity in political, ideological or philosophical viewpoint. To my knowledge, no college or university has ever undertaken an effort to increase the number of republicans or conservatives or libertarians or evangelical Christians or veterans on campus. No diversity effort of which I am aware has ever asked applicants or candidates about their thoughts, as opposed to their demographic identities.
Here is an interesting philosophical question. Is it ethical to give the members of certain under-represented racial, ethnic or sexual groups preferential treatment in admission to universities and colleges as students and in hiring as faculty? I believe that there are reasonable arguments both for and against this proposition. Colleges and universities that undertake diversity initiatives clearly think that the answer to this question is yes. They may believe that such preferential treatment is necessary to remedy the effects of past discrimination against the designated groups or to counteract the effect of present ongoing discrimination. They may simply believe that proportional demographic representation is a requirement of social justice.
