Comments Elsewhere

Beito: “In response to evidence of this type, some conservatives, most notably David Horowitz, have called for universities to expand the existing use of race and sex (biological diversity) as factors in hiring to include ideological diversity.

“While I think that Horowitz makes a stronger case than many of his critics are willing to concede, I have never been sympathetic to the approach he recommends.”

I have to differ here. There are many reasons to worry about hiring practices that are intended to skew towards race and gender “diversity” within the academy. But whatever you might decide in those deliberations, Horowitz’s proposals are a very different beast. His case isn’t compelling, either within the entrenched logic of skewed hiring or from without. It amounts to nothing less than a sustained assault on the idea of the University, in a way that hiring skewed by race or gender does not.

Here’s why: one of the typical arguments given for policies that encourage demographic diversity is that in a society coping with a history of oppression (and a great deal of ideology coming out of academic institution to support various forms of that oppression), it’s worthwhile to cultivate an academic community with people who come from historically excluded groups, because those people bring a systematically different set of life experiences to the discussion and therefore may be aware of arguments and evidence that may never be seriously aired in more insular academic settings.

Maybe that’s true and maybe that’s false, but it’s important to see that it is importantly different from Horowitz’s notion, which is that it is worthwhile to skew hiring practices based on the political conclusions that researchers come to. (This is connected, of course, to a whole raft of what is, effectively, ideological identity politics from the Right.) But there is absolutely no value whatsoever to diversity of conclusions. The point of the University is to build a community in a conclusion is taken to be worthwhile only insofar as (and only because) the argument for it is worthwhile. Horowitz’s notion is to skew hiring in favor of certain conclusions whether the research and the argument supporting those conclusions measures up under standards of academic rigor or not; that is, to turn the idea of the University entirely on its head.

Think of it this way: demographic diversity arguments are intended to skew hiring based on non-academic factors. A bad idea? Perhaps. But Horowitz’s plan is intended to skew hiring based on anti-academic factors. Of the two cases, I think Horowitz has very clearly got the less compelling and more dangerous one.