The Diversity Myth

by David O Sacks

  In this respect, even those readers who do not agree with all of the authors’ views, would do well to take The Diversity Myth as a timely and thoughtful warning about the real stakes in the culture wars on our campuses. Their frightening and thought-provoking account is appearing at a moment of mounting public consciousness of the ways in which our educational system is failing our young people. We all know that we are doing something wrong. Some turn to national standards, others to a voucher system for school choice, others to merit increases for teachers, others to multicultural curricula, others simply to more funding. Most colleges, especially the handful of truly elite private universities (the Stanfords of this world) seem to avoid, as if magically, the most debilitating problems that plague our schools. Their immunity, however, has nothing to do with magic. It derives directly from their position as gatekeepers of our most prestigious and remunerative careers. In this light, it does not matter that much what curriculum Stanford offers its students. No matter what Stanford does with or to them, most will go on to the law, business, medical, or graduate school of their choice—or at least their second choice.

  Seen in another light, however, what Stanford does matters tremendously to all of us, which may be why its doings merit national media attention. For if Stanford declares war on Western civilization or on the very idea of civilization, it will have to answer for its role in shaping a national leadership that treats with contempt the values of Western civilization—from individual freedom to respectful manners to the open debate of contested issues. It will, in short, contribute to the formation of a leadership that does not stand for anything beyond personal self-interest and that, in not honoring its forebears, will have lost all reason to believe in itself. This book, above all, makes clear that the educational collapse of our most exclusive universities must be of deep concern to us all.

  —Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

  Elénore Raoul Professor of Humanities

  Emory University

  Preface to the Second Edition

  The “diversity myth” is the myth that universities are doing a good job promoting diversity. In reality, America's leading schools have been stifling diversity, and the situation has improved only modestly since the original release of this book in hardcover two years ago. We believe universities could be doing a much better job promoting diversity, and we wrote this book both to articulate the problem and to provide a blueprint for improvement. The largely favorable response to the first edition suggests that many people across the political spectrum share our concerns and that change may be in the winds. We are gratified, therefore, that the Independent Institute has reissued this book in a more accessible paperback form, and we hope the new edition will spark a broad-based discussion about what terms like “multiculturalism” and “diversity” really mean.

  Just in the last two years, the diversity debate seems to have taken on a new urgency. On college campuses and beyond, new controversies abound. Many of these developments are adumbrated in this book. For example:

  Georgetown University recently dropped its “great authors” requirement. English majors there will no longer have to know anything about Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton in order to graduate. English departments at more than a dozen other schools have followed suit.1 This development has inspired controversy, but it also has vindicated this book. In Chapter 1, we predict that the dismissal of the classics will become the norm as what passes for “multiculturalism” spreads.

  An indication of what might replace the classics is the so-called “-ISM Project,” a controversial new course on “diversity” being taught on twelve college campuses. “The purpose of the project is to create yet another way for students to articulate their feelings about diversity to other students,” an organizer explained. Yet the course defines the study of “diversity” only to mean the study of racism, sexism, ageism, and capitalism (apparently a form of discrimination). And the class is one-sided. Capitalism, for instance, was described as “the root of all evil in our society.”2 Again, this new development has vindicated our book. In Chapter 3, we show that new curricular offerings are not always as diverse as they might at first appear.

  Recently-revised national history standards continue to draw fire. The new standards de-emphasize Western ideas, including the view that the American republic evolved as the extension of Western civilization in the New World. As a result, no mention is made of the Federalist Papers. Instead, the new standards promote the notion that “three worlds” (African, Native American, and European) engaged in a “great convergence” to form a “composite American society created out of such human diversity.”3 Anticipating this debate, our book discusses the merits of the West vis-à-vis the rest of the world (see Chapters 1 and 8).

  With the recent passage of Proposition 209, Californians voted to reject racial preferences in a broad range of state functions, including admission and hiring at public universities.4 Similarly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, considering affirmative action at the University of Texas, has ruled that racial preferences can never be justified as a means of achieving “diversity.”5 Foreshadowing this debate, Chapters 2 and 3 discuss attempts to achieve faculty diversity through racial preferences.

  The University of California at Berkeley has a controversial new branch of ethnic studies: “whiteness studies.” The program analyzes what it calls the “white racial identity” and “white privilege.” At a recent conference, Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev suggested that whites were responsible for many of the world's social problems. His paper advocated that citizens follow police around with video cameras in hopes of filming another Rodney King incident, and thus provoking outrage against whites6 We predicted such an increase in race consciousness, and this book analyzes views on “whiteness” in some detail (see Chapters 2 and 5).

  Elementary schools have begun to follow the lead of curricular activists at the university level. In 1996, the Oakland school board unanimously recognized “Ebonics” as a legitimate dialect of the English language that should be taught in schools. “Ebonics” is rap-music slang, characterized by its use of the verb “to be”—as in, “He be going to the store”—and multiple negatives, such as “Didn't nobody see nothing.”7 As discussed in Chapter 3, universities have been teaching Ebonics for many years, and at Stanford University the course even fulfills a graduation requirement.

  At James K. Polk Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia, fifth-graders tore up the words to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” last December and instead sang about “the 12 days of the holidays.” While Christianity was out, however, “Kwanzaa” was in. Organizers explained the move as an attempt to promote “diversity.”8 We anticipated this trend, and Chapter 4 describes the animosity of many educators towards religion, especially Christianity.

  Outside education, the diversity debate continues to arise in new settings. For instance, there is the world of “multicultural therapy.” The American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association have published treatment guidelines for racial and ethnic groups. And a popular textbook for psychotherapists asks: “As a member of the White group, what responsibility do you hold for the racist, oppressive, and discriminatory manner by which you personally and professionally deal with minorities?” At San Francisco General Hospital, one of the new “educational objectives” for the staff is to “break down denial of one's own participation in racism.” Staff members who claim not to be racist are said to be in “denial” and are assigned to re-education.9 These indoctrination campaigns began on university campuses, and we predicted they would spread elsewhere. Chapter 6 describes the phenomenon.

  At the national level, diversity and multiculturalism continue to be popular themes for politicians seeking office. At the 1996 Republican Convention, vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp said that his goal was to “transform the party” into one attractive to “diversity” and “multiculturalism.”10 At the same time, his party in the U.S. House of Representa
tives voted to declare English the official language of the United States. Backers of the bill portrayed it as “a defense of American society against the assault of multiculturalism.”11 This national political conflict over multiculturalism (including Bill and Hillary Clinton's views on the subject) is analyzed in Chapter 8.

  The original publication of this book, therefore, was well-timed to shed light on these ongoing debates. Indeed, many of our predictions have already been realized. And the rapid rate at which diversity issues continue to arise in new contexts suggests that this book is more timely than ever.

  Of course, at the time we began writing The Diversity Myth, these thoughts were not foremost in our minds. Our primary goal was simply to present an accurate account of what “diversity” politics and its alter-ego “multiculturalism” have meant at a major university, the place these doctrines originated and have been most fully developed and implemented. Such an account would help to resolve the larger diversity debate taking place across America—a debate unfortunately engulfed in confusing rhetoric. We wanted to illuminate that debate with hard facts. For example, “multiculturalism,” as practiced on today's college campuses, is hardly the source of cosmopolitanism and openness that the term connotes. In practice, it has nothing to do with the study of other cultures, and it actually has resulted in budget cuts for departments teaching foreign languages. Requirements that graduating students be proficient in a foreign language have also been gutted in recent years.12 The main purpose of multiculturalism, it seems, is to propagate intellectual conformity in the name of “diversity.”

  Indeed, it may come as a surprise that universities have limited diversity in a number of significant ways. At the same time, they have been very successful in promoting the myth that diversity is alive and well. But consider the reality:

  Economic diversity. The enormous cost of multicultural programs, personnel, services, and departments—what Stanford's president has collectively called a “mini-welfare state”—has stifled economic diversity. The price of an elite undergraduate education now exceeds $100,000 for four years, and steep tuition hikes continue to squeeze middle- and low-income families who do not qualify for financial aid. The result has lent credence to the view that elite universities are playgrounds for the rich.

  Political diversity. Multicultural hiring policies, despite their stated goal of diversifying the faculty, have led to ideological conformity in many departments. At Stanford, more than eighty percent of the faculty are members of the same political party. (That party happens to be the Democratic Party, but the problem would be just as acute if eighty percent of the faculty were members of the GOP.) This figure actually understates the lack of political diversity because the few Republican professors tend to be moderates or centrists, while many Democratic professors are far-left.

  Racial diversity. Segregation still exists on our college campuses. In the name of multiculturalism, universities like Cornell, University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford segregate African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans into “race dormitories.”13 The net result of this ghettoizing is to remove a large number of minority students from the rest of the campus and to limit diversity of interaction. Not surprisingly, there are fewer interracial friendships. Stanford even conducts separate graduation ceremonies for different minority groups, further dividing the campus along racial lines.

  Intellectual Diversity. The most important kind of diversity on a college campus is intellectual diversity, and this is the kind which has suffered most. Speech restrictions, political grading, ostracism of nonconformists, unqualified denunciations of the West, and a curricular obsession with oppression theory and victimology (all discussed at length herein) make clear that toleration of dissenting viewpoints is not a multicultural virtue. Because some students may be recalcitrant about losing their free-speech rights, Stanford also has hired a “Multicultural Educator” to “inculcate ideas” in those eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who “resist educational efforts” and “avoid personal commitment” to the new regime. Ironically, as if to confirm our point, Stanford's leaders responded to the first edition of this book with a new public-relations strategy to trumpet their school's supposed diversity in which they warned independent-minded faculty to shut up because “an institution must speak with one voice, not many.”14 To university administrators, apparently, diversity means a chorus of voices all saying the same thing.

  Since myths tend to evaporate if people think about them, the new restrictions essentially are designed to stop people from thinking—or at least from expressing their suspicions. Thus, if “multiculturalism” is universities’ euphemism for the myth of diversity, “political correctness” may be defined as the sad reality. We called our book The Diversity Myth to summarize the uniformity that has occurred: campuses are full of people who look different but think alike. This is not real diversity, but pseudo-diversity. Real diversity requires a diversity of ideas, not simply a bunch of like-minded activists who resemble the bar scene from Star Wars.

  As we have made these points in various contexts over the last two years—in newspapers, in magazines, at speeches, or on television and radio programs—we have been a bit surprised by the response. Not unexpectedly, traditional critics of the university have been supportive, and we received words of praise from the writers and editors of such magazines as Insight, The Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, and the American Spectator. National Review wrote that “future historians of the period will find this book indispensable.”15 And Crisis further observed that, of the books on multicultural higher education, this one “may well be the best.”16 What also delighted us, however, was the encouragement from nontraditional quarters—liberal supporters who defended us in print, such as feminist scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, former Democratic Governor Richard Lamm, and Philip Merrill, publisher of The Washingtonian. A number of Stanford students—of all political stripes—approached us and said they wished they had written this book.

  This response has been rewarding, but much more importantly it has suggested to us that there is a common mischaracterization of the diversity debate. Usually it is framed as a debate between conservatives and liberals—or, more precisely, between angry conservative white men and everybody else. Little could be further from the truth. The prevailing orthodoxy on campus demands conformity from conservatives and liberals, blacks and whites, men and women alike; dissenters have been targeted at all ends of the spectrum. Thus, in The Diversity Myth we describe liberal Mexican-American students who were “encircled” and threatened for not uniting with the radicals; a liberal male student hounded out of an all-female feminist studies class; and black students who were “blacklisted” and persecuted for befriending white students. The problem on America's campuses has more to do with intolerance than with ideology.

  Fortunately, as more people turn their attention to the problem, the myth of diversity is starting to unravel. As the reaction to the first edition demonstrated, fewer and fewer people are buying the politically-correct line that political correctness does not exist. For one thing, there are too many anecdotes, too much evidence that the problem has grown out of control—and new horror stories seem to arrive daily. But more important than the sheer number of examples and anecdotes is the fact that these anecdotes have resonated powerfully with people across the political spectrum. The reason is simple: almost everybody has experienced something similar. The reader's personal experience with political correctness may not have been quite as catastrophic, but it was unpleasant nonetheless. That is why there is such a broad coalition emerging against multiculturalism—all the way from traditional conservatives to 1960s-style liberals who believe in the virtue of free speech to Marxists who teach Shakespeare.

  The first step in thinking about “diversity,” both on and off college campuses, must involve an understanding of what is actually happening. It is for this reason that the two of us wrote this book. We need to have the courage to
confront “multiculturalism” and “diversity” honestly. And once the rhetoric has been stripped away, our readers can decide for themselves whether they would prefer genuine diversity on our campuses and beyond, or merely the myth of it.

  —David Sacks

  —Peter Thiel

  Notes

  1. Carol Innerst, “‘Teach-in’ goes all-out in hailing Shakespeare,” The Washington Times, May 1, 1996.

  2. Carol Innerst, “Project on ‘-isms’ is causing schisms on 12 campuses,” The Washington Times, May 22, 1996.

  3. “Ripe for the dustbin of history,” The Washington Times, May 18, 1996.

  4. Peter Baker, “Clinton Vows to Fight for Affirmative Action,” The Washington Post, July 18, 1997.

  5. George F. Will, “Subverting Diversity,” The Washington Post, March 28, 1996.

  6. Quentin Hardy, “School of Thought: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being,” The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 1997.

  7. “Ebonics proponent quits school post,” The Washington Times, August 7, 1997.

  8. Rex Bowman, “First Noel comes last in schools; Holidays marked without religion,” The Washington Times, December 20, 1996.

  9. Sally Satel, “Psychiatric Apartheid,” The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1996.

  10. William Claiborne, “Kemp Invokes Spirit of Lincoln and Dr. King,” The Washington Post, August 16, 1996.

  11. John E. Yang, “House Votes English as Official U.S. Language for First Time,” The Washington Post, August 2, 1996.

  12. A study of the 50 most elite colleges and universities showed that foreign language requirements have declined by a third since the 1960s. See “Lowering Higher Education,” The Washington Times, March 19, 1996.