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1 comment - Last on 10/01/2009

Diversity's Doom & Pluralism's Plans

September 29, 2009 By Ashley Thorne

We are delighted to announce that the American Enterprise Institute has published The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope, and Reforms. The book, a collection of essays, includes chapters by NAS's president Peter Wood and Chairman Steve Balch.

Dr. Wood’s chapter, “College Conformity 101: Where the Diversity of Ideas Meets the Idea of Diversity,” draws on his extensive work in his 2003 book to tease out the two contrasting meanings of the mysterious word “diversity.” He points out indicators showing that diversity ideology is on the decline, most of all because “it remains at odds with our deepest moral intuitions.”

A hundred pages on in the book, Steve Balch sets out some practical tactics for reforming higher education. His chapter, “The Route to Academic Pluralism,” proposes ways to get a foot in the “nearly closed intellectual shop”—not through affirmative action for ideas, but through realistic strategies, such as program-building and “providing reliable guideposts for those wondering what can be done to foster change.”

Other authors in The Politically Correct University are friends and partners of NAS, such as Victor Davis Hanson, Anne Neal, and Stanley Rothman. Editors Robert Maranto, Richard E. Redding, and Frederick M. Hess did excellent work putting together this important book; we hail it as a landmark publication in the higher education reform movement and look forward to the ways it will advance the conversation.

The Politically Correct University is available for purchase here.

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This book will be on the top of my reading list. After all, in today's academy -- in this theater of the absurd -- a text providing "reliable guideposts for those wondering what can be done to foster change" is a must-read.

Incidentally, I agree with Dr. Wood's statement that diversity ideology is on the decline. That's the good news. The bad news is that an ideology no less threatening to academic pluralism than diversity is on the rise: the sustainability obsession. It looks like the fight to keep the "nearly closed intellectual shop" open will have to continue unabated.

by ivorytowerreform Posted on 10/01/2009

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