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The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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Diversity a double-edged sword

Today all major universities have “diversity” programs. Their purpose, according to UW Madison’s diversity website, is “promoting diversity and climate.” Former chancellor John Wiley says, “We all have a role to play” in “expanding diversity.”

So what exactly is diversity?

UW’s Plan 2008 says: “Diversity broadly includes not only race and gender but the connections between these and other sources of identity such as religion, ethnicity, age, sexual [orientation], class and ability.”

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The University of Tennessee gives a more comprehensive overview: “Diversity is a commitment to recognizing and appreciating the variety of characteristics that make individuals unique. …” Examples include: “Age; cognitive style; culture; disability (mental, learning, physical); economic background; education; ethnicity; gender identity; geographic background; language(s) spoken; marital/partnered status; physical appearance; political affiliation; race; religious beliefs; sexual orientation.”

Chancellor Biddy Martin says that diversity is not a goal or political cause, but a fact. Diversity is simply “the reality of human difference” and “not something that can be opposed.” Succinctly put, “People are different.”

Yes, people are different. Of course everything in reality is different; no two trees or rocks or blades of grass are identical in every way. Is this what “celebrating diversity” means? Are these programs some strange philosophical movement bent on exalting the metaphysically given?

This raises some obvious questions: Which kinds of interactions are valuable? What differences should be recognized and appreciated and which ones should be denounced? What exchanges are worthwhile and which ones are detrimental?

Is it true one should engage differences per se? In any particular context, aren’t some differences irrelevant (such as race and hair color) while others are important (such as knowledge and work ethic)?

For example, should someone with an irrational cognitive style be fully included in the medical school or a hostile student embraced and appreciated? Certainly not. Should one’s race or sexuality be engaged and appreciated in an academic setting or should these be regarded as irrelevant to a person’s ability to learn?

Conspicuously missing from so-called “diversity” programs is any standard of evaluation. Which differences are important and which ones are irrelevant? Which ideas are true and which are false? Which character traits are desirable and which are harmful?

Proponents of diversity dismiss any standards for evaluating individuals and instead exalt difference as such. Embrace, engage, include and acknowledge human differences — but by what standard? Diversity simply dispenses with standards, regarding “engagement, interaction, exchange and difference” as good in and of themselves.

Take, for example, the term “differently-abled,” widely used by diversity programs. Its use, in lieu of “disabled,” demonstrates diversity proponents’ aversion to standards and value judgments. The term “disabled” involves a standard of value and evaluates disability as inferior to ability by that standard. Diversity proponents reject such evaluations, saying, “People are just different.” Thus judging ability as superior to disability is pejoratively called “ableism” and is regarded as no better than judging one’s race as superior to another.

Diversity amounts to embracing difference per se, while rejecting standards and evaluation.

But dealing with others requires standards and judgment. Whether recruiting students or hiring employees, it is not difference that should be embraced, but judging which differences are important and which ones are not. It requires choosing the correct standard by which to judge people, not adopting a policy of indiscrimination. To value indiscriminately is a contradiction in terms.

To truly embrace, engage, interact and appreciate others one must have a standard for doing so. One should, for example, recognize and admire ability, character, rationality and honesty irrespective of race, sex and ancestry. In other words, one has to determine which differences are important and which ones are incidental.

On this count diversity policies fail miserably.

By elevating “difference” to a sublime status and dispensing with explicit standards, it is race that becomes the de facto standard. “Engaging” people of color and seeking Hispanic “representation” becomes the focus. Despite the mantra that individuals are different, judging and grouping people based on race becomes official policy.

In this way diversity inverts a proper policy of valuing others by reducing actual values, such as ability, to mere differences to be embraced without discern, while holding up non-values, such as ethnic lineage, as requiring distinction and attention.

Dealing with individuals and their myriad of differences requires standards and value judgments. It requires separating rational discrimination from irrational discrimination. It requires identifying traits and standards that are objectively valuable in an academic setting and judging individuals accordingly — not by differences that make no difference. Vacuous bromides to embrace, include, and love one anothers’ differences won’t do it.

Jim Allard ([email protected]) is a graduate student majoring in biological sciences.

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