An eye-opening peek behind the curtain featuring those reporting the "national news" at the Washington Post. No investigation was necessary here--these "reporters" and editors are vigorously self-airing their insider commentary of this oppression-olympics for all to see. All of this commotion was launched as the result of the most recent lies by "reporter" Taylor Lorenz and then follow-up lies and subterfuge by WP editors in their attempts to paper over Lorenz' lies.
1. Expand your definition of diversity. While racial diversity and gender expression often dominate what people mean by diversity on campus, for a company trying to serve a diverse market in a fast-changing economic environment, having diversity of opinion, diversity of experience, and diversity of social class and geographic background can be even more important. In fact, the kind of diversity most often found to confer advantages on teams is not demographic diversity but rather diversity of perspectives on topics closely related to the task at hand. This includes both functional diversity (e.g., what roles people play in the company) and political diversity (at least when trying to find truth about politically controversial topics).
2. Reconsider what colleges you hire from. While elite colleges offer the promise of bright and hard-working employees, the problems we covered in our book are generally more severe at elite private colleges. You might want to consider hiring from large state schools, and ones from regions of the country other than the West Coast or Northeast. This will increase your diversity by social class and region, and it may help your organization avoid the elite college groupthink that seems to be damaging some organizations, potentially giving your organization a competitive advantage.
You might want to go still further and consider hiring people who have not attended college at all, if you can put in place standards that still guarantee hard-working employees with relevant skills. We believe that the numbers of bright, hard-working, and talented people choosing to skip college or to learn through a less traditional alternative will increase in the coming years, while the ability of elite college graduates to work well with those who do not share their beliefs will continue to decline.
3. Orientation: Be direct with candidates and new hires. If you decide that you want your organization to be politically neutral or self-consciously politically heterogeneous it’s a good idea to say so in job postings, and to introduce that idea to employees from their very first day. For example, you could state: “Our company’s culture is oriented toward success in our mission, which is [lay out business mission here]. We therefore do not take public stands on issues that are not central to our business mission. If you're not willing to work for such a company, or with people who disagree with you on some of your deepest beliefs, this might not be the right organization for you.”
The adversarial legal system—in which both sides of a dispute are represented vigorously by attorneys with a vested interest in winning—is at the heart of the American constitutional order. Since time immemorial, law schools have tried to prepare their students to take part in that system.
Not so much anymore. Now, the politicization and tribalism of campus life have crowded out old-fashioned expectations about justice and neutrality. The imperatives of race, gender and identity are more important to more and more law students than due process, the presumption of innocence, and all the norms and values at the foundation of what we think of as the rule of law.
One more . . .
Trial verdicts that do not jibe with the new politics are seen as signs of an inextricable hate—and an illegitimate legal order. At the Santa Clara University School of Law, administrators emailed students that the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse—the 17-year-old who killed two men and wounded another during a riot, in Kenosha, Wisconsin—was “further evidence of the persistent racial injustice and systemic racism within our criminal justice system.” At UC Irvine, the university’s chief diversity officer emailed students that the acquittal “conveys a chilling message: Neither Black lives nor those of their allies’ matter.” (He later apologized for having “appeared to call into question a lawful trial verdict.”)
Professors say it is harder to lecture about cases in which accused rapists are acquitted, or a police officer is found not guilty of abusing his authority. One criminal law professor at a top law school told me he’s even stopped teaching theories of punishment because of how negatively students react to retributivism—the view that punishment is justified because criminals deserve to suffer.
“I got into this job because I liked to play devil’s advocate,” said the tenured professor, who identifies as a liberal. “I can’t do that anymore. I have a family.”
Other law professors—several of whom asked me not to identify their institution, their area of expertise, or even their state of residence—were similarly terrified.
Nadine Strossen, the first woman to head the American Civil Liberties Union and a professor at New York Law School, told me: “I massively self-censor."
In our latest video, FAIR’s Dana Stangel-Plowe discusses the issues surrounding a new academic theory called “Culturally Responsive Education.” While intended to connect students with their educational material on a deep level, Stangel-Plowe explains how this new method achieves the opposite by assuming people who superficially look like one another must also think like one another.
[T]he idea of providing kids books that feature characters who look like them feels intuitive as a way to connect them to the material; but building curriculum around students’ skin color, ancestry, or gender raises serious questions about the very purpose of education in our diverse and pluralistic nation.
By making assumptions about what will engage students based on race or immutable traits, CRE is racist. The idea that all people who share the same group identity would also share the same interests, experiences, or beliefs is reductive and demeaning to the unique human beings in that group.
Despite what some of its proponents would have us believe, CRE is much more than simply a framework for student-centered learning and a celebration of different cultures and cultural ways of knowing. CRE’s focus on “power dynamics,” “social change,” “liberation,” and “equitable outcomes” plainly reveal that critical pedagogy is baked into CRE. Critical pedagogy, popularized by Paolo Freire, is the Marxism-derived school of critical theory applied to education. Thus, it designates K-12 classrooms as the place to start a revolution to dismantle the dominant power structures—meaning our current systems of liberal democracy. Critical pedagogy is explicitly a political ideology—similar to other illiberal ideologies that focus on “liberation” and seek equality of outcomes—aiming to turn students into revolutionary activists.
With CRE becoming widespread, we must consider: Is there a better way to leverage student engagement for success across cultures? And, most importantly, how do we ensure that all students, regardless of their group identities, become “classroom insiders” without dehumanizing them or flattening them into stereotypes—and without replacing learning with activism?
It seems that we are mastering the art of slicing and dicing people culturally in much the same way that Google, Facebook and Amazon are using Billy Ball analytics on their customer bases. I see no problem categorizing people by their interests, such as knitting, pickle ball or art. The problem is with dividing people by irrelevant categories, such as the way they look or (often) the place where they were born. CRE assumes that people are "stuck" in these irrelevant categories and they they want more and more of the same. As Stangle-Plowe states, this is insulting and destructive. I'm proud to say that I am constantly learning many wonderful things from people who look different than me. I'm also proud to say that I don't obsess over what a person looks like. CLE is a well-meaning but destructive to the American Dream that we are one people who can work and play together. E pluribus unum.
Evaluating people based on superficial characteristics is inaccurate and lazy. We need to avoid all miscategorizations, of course. Because people are extremely complex, it makes no sense to judge them on "race," sex or national origin any more than it would to determine who they are based on astrology.
Our cultural dysfunction based on insanely off-target miscategorizations needs to be cut off at the root, as suggested by Sheena Mason:
a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity.
Based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Principles of Nonviolence
Exercise Moral Courage. Telling the truth is a way of life for courageous people. Peaceful change cannot happen without a commitment to the truth.
Build Bridges. We seek to win friendship and gain understanding. The result of our movement is redemption and reconciliation.
Defeat Injustice, Not People. We recognize that those who are intolerant and seek to oppress others are also human, and are not evil people. We seek to defeat evil, not people.
Don’t Take the Bait. Suffering can educate and transform. We will not retaliate when attacked, physically or otherwise. We will meet hate and anger with compassion and kindness.
Choose Love, Not Hate. We seek to resist violence of the spirit as well as the body. We believe in the power of love.
Trust in Justice. We trust that the universe is on the side of justice. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.
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