Diversity Training

In October, the University of Delaware launched a mandatory diversity reeducation program for approximately 7,000 of its students with the express intent of “treating” them for politically incorrect assumptions about race, the environment, morality, and sexuality. Not only were the students required to these attend sessions, the campus resident assistants (RA’s) were required to document student progress toward university social goals.

After massive parent protests and a media campaign by the watchdog group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), University President Patrick Harker returned from China to publicly suspend the program. In his letter, President Harker apologized only for the methods of the program, and not the ultimate goal. The resident life program was designed to support “the education of students as citizens, scholars and professionals and their preparation to contribute creatively and with integrity to a global society,” he wrote. To that end, President Harker expressed that he was mainly concerned that “that the actual purpose [of the program] is not being fulfilled,” but maintains that he and the Vice President will develop more appropriate methods for other “residence life programs” which will “support the intellectual, cultural and ethical development of our students.” In other words, he still believes that his University’s students require ethical and social training.

The events at the University of Delaware follow a common trend among academic institutions, and—despite their shocking nature—fail to surprise those familiar with university-sponsored politically-correct mantras. Stephen Balch, founder of the National Association of Scholars, argues that the University of Delaware indoctrination serves as a microcosm of the obsession with diversity that has swept the higher education system. The biggest single problem in the modern university is the new “sectarian illiberal element….it’s there, it’s vocal, energized, it’s true-believing…rise of the university is also the way to hold up sections of diversity… and [the situation] lately at the University of Delaware certainly is symptomatic of the power” such doctrines hold, Balch told an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) audience.

The quest for a politically-correct world is spreading throughout the public education system as well. As reported earlier, the National Education Association (NEA) 2007 Convention included resolutions to “increase respect, understanding, acceptance, and sensitivity toward individuals and groups in a diverse society.” NEA 2007 Convention resolution B-11 also calls on members to “eliminate discrimination and stereotyping in curricula” and “foster the dissemination and use of non-discriminatory and non-stereotypical language, resources, practices and activities.” The NEA is also intent on rewriting history to “integrate an accurate portrayal…of all groups throughout history.”

Even the sciences—once thought to be impervious disciplines of truth-seeking— have not been spared in the quest to further core liberal doctrines about pollution and environmentalism, argues Noretta Koertge, a Professor of Science History and Philosophy at Indiana University. She suggests that students would learn more science if school teachers would introduce social relevance as an enhancement to core curriculum, rather than the main focus. Introducing an environmental social agenda into elementary classrooms hinders learning because studies have shown that young children learn better by doing (e.g., experiments) than by lectures. “I predict there will be more and more emphasis on [environmental] issues, and it’s too bad… it’s just not a good way to teach science, to center your curriculum on that,” she said. Koertge argued that government funding may not be able to fund particular scientific outcomes, but it “Some things, while not censored, just can’t get funded, and [public] science education is subject to national science education standards.”

Ironically, diversity initiatives have themselves left behind minorities in the past. Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow John McWhorter, also speaking at the AEI conference, noted that the studies on Black English as an African language have largely delegitimized the dialect among the majority of Americans. Ebonics is not formed from grammatical errors, he argues, but stems from a composite of Irish and British grammatical structures with a “light dusting” of African language. He argues that those still pushing for Black English deny the dialect’s roots because “that’s not considered interesting enough because it doesn’t make Black English separate enough from the European oppressors.”

“If the past is the pattern, [the Science departments] are not going to be able to stand up to the energy exercised against them by the activist groups out on the left, the political allies outside the academy…. and inside the academy normal people are simply afraid to stand up against them because they’ll have their offices picketed, they’ll be denounced in the student paper, they’ll have things scrawled on their doors, all sorts of things will happen to them,” said James Piereson, Director of the Center for the American University at the Manhattan Institute .

Balch told the AEI audience that he was more worried that the predominantly liberal faculty, having likewise been educated by liberal faculty, will fail to recognize that another answer is possible. “While the most egregious examples make the headlines, the situation is infinitely more serious because of the quiet politicization that imbues so many courses,” leading to classes in feminist or marxist deconstruction because it “feels natural,” Balch said. However, if external responses by the Family Research Council, FIRE, and concerned parents remain as dramatic as in the Delaware case, colleges may be left with no students to indoctrinate.

Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer at Accuracy in Academia.