Diversity disconnect

By Tom Quiner

Diversity. Inclusion. Tolerance.

These words have defined liberal dogma for decades. It’s all a sham, of course.

Liberals have no appetite for practicing Christians, conservatives, critical thinkers, or anyone who believes human life … and personhood … begins at conception.

They don’t welcome diverse thought.

They aren’t tolerant of diverse thought.

In fact, they are utterly intolerant of diverse thought … if it is any of the above.

Take the University of Iowa, from which all three of my children graduated. A highly qualified female attorney was denied employment by their law school because of her previous experience of working for pro life groups. Forty-six out of 50 of the professors in the department were registered Democrats. She would have been that highly rare professor in academia: a Republican.

An associate dean with the university had admitted she was being blackballed by the department “because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it).”

The university alleged the professor performed poorly in a video-taped job interview with other faculty members. They claimed one of her answers disqualified her from the job, which the conservative professor adamantly denied. The video tape would exonerate the conservative, but conveniently, the University said the tape had been accidentally erased.

All of this happened a few years ago.

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More recently, a website called Campus Reform, reported on another University of Iowa associate professor. This one, Jodi Linley, vows to make life miserable for her white students. I quote from Campus Reform:

“As a white assistant professor of mostly white graduate students who will become higher education leaders, I work to dismantle whiteness in my curriculum, assignments, and pedagogy,” Linley explains, noting that in addition to her “white identity,” she also draws on her “identities as a queer, able-bodied, cisgender woman” with a working-class background to construct her “teaching paradigm.”

She pointedly rejects neutrality and objectivity:

Linley says her commitment to designing classes that fight white privilege began as soon as she became a professor in 2014, at which point she resolved to “develop courses that both unveiled and rejected” the notion that “neutrality and objectivity are realistic and attainable.”

She openly admits she will not be tolerant of dissenting thought her white students:

She offers up five strategies other professors can use to deconstruct white privilege in their own classes, such as making sure students know that their views on race will be challenged, “interrupting oppression” that occurs in classroom settings, and segregating students by race so that they can have more productive dialogues about privilege.

“For white students, talking about race with an all-white group of peers facilitates their realisation that they are raced beings, thus revealing their own white ignorance,” Linley asserts as justification for segregating students during some discussions.

***

Over at Iowa State University, an astronomy professor was denied tenure a few years ago because of his embrace of Intelligence Design. Keep in mind, he did NOT teach Intelligence Design in his astronomy class. However, a self-procalimed atheist professor at the University successfully lobbied against the astronomy professor to deny him tenure.

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To recap,

  1. A lawyer at U of I is denied a job in the law school because she is a pro life activist.
  2. A U of I professor proudly proclaims she will judge her students by the color of their skin, not the content of their character.
  3. An Iowa State professor is denied tenure because he doesn’t believe the universe was formed by raw luck.

So much for diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. This diversity disconnect with American liberalism exposes the shallowness and hypocrisy of their belief system.

It is more than a sham. It is a shame.