Notes from academia: diversity statements

They’re all over now–job applications, research proposals.  It’s the usual Leftist Motte and Bailey tactic.  What they actually want is a loyalty oath to the anti-white ideology.  If someone refuses to provide this or points out that such a thing is illegal, they can fall back on saying that it’s not conformity to an ideology that they’re testing but ability to teach, interest, and inspire people from “diverse” and “underserved” backgrounds.

The latter actually is a valid thing to expect from an academic, but I see no reason to believe that “people of color” respond differently than others to different teaching strategies.  When one gets down to practicalities, diversity in academic background and preparedness turn out to be the real pedagogical issues confronted.  For outreach and research recruitment, the challenge of engaging those with little prior exposure to a given academic field turns out to have more to do with class and region than membership in a sacralized group per se.  So, most of these “diversity” initiatives that aspiring academics or grant recipients promise to do actually are worthwhile. The category of people they might actually help correlates with but is not exclusive to the groups they are most advertised to help. Surely, though, there is something corrupting in winning the opportunity to do good (e.g. improving teaching of those with weak backgrounds, performing science demos at rural schools) by pretending that one wants to do evil (promote anti-whiteness).