The Diversity Delusion
How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (A Review Of The Book By Heather Mac Donald)
This book by Heather Mac Donald should be required reading for all parents that are intending to “send their kids to college” and by all kids that are intending to attend college. Why do I say that you ask? Well let me highlight a few topics from this well-written book and encourage you to get your own copy (to support good authorship on important topics such as this).
The book is divided into four major sections and the topics within these sections are developed in detail by the author. The four top-level sections are:
Race
Gender
The Bureaucracy
The Purpose of the University
In the section on Race, MacDonald addresses how the college campuses have become a location where the only allowed opinions are those which conform to the Marxist agenda of creating class conflict across the nation. They are sewing seeds of discontent and radicalism deeply within the American University system. All of the riots and looting and burning and violence and murder that characterized 2020 in what the Democrats and leftist political hacks called “mostly peaceful protests” can be traced back to a massive indoctrination campaign that has been underway within American universities since the 1960’s but within the past 20 years has completely overtaken campuses across the nation to such a degree that a dissenting “conservative” (rational) voice is immediately “shut down” and “disallowed” by both campus administration and the radicalized students within the campus population.
MacDonald further discusses the hysterical actions taken on campuses to “combat’ what are characterized as “extremist” views of those who put God, service to country, care for others, and personal liberty into the topics that they would like to discuss. All of these topics typically “trigger” a negative response by the large indoctrinated population of obedient students that somehow missed one of the primary objectives of attending a University: “To engage in vigorous debate on topics where there are multiple perspectives and where you may not have the same point of view as others.” All of that multi-perspective debat triggers “microaggressions” (and that is a complete farce according to MacDonald).
In the section on Gender MacDonald covers the “campus rape myth” and the “#metoo movement” and how it has further established an environment where conversations that seek to honestly explore the roles and experiences and value of males and females in society are disparaged and tightly framed in such a way as to “emphasize” the concepts of “oppressor” and “oppressed.”
The Bureaucracy is a section that dives into the damage being done across American Universities where identity politics is causing direct harm to the study of science. The administrative state has arrived and is being perfected on campuses across the nation and lessons learned on the campus are being relayed into the highest levels of the United States government so that they too can be extremely effective at suppressing the population.
In the final section, Heather MacDonald focuses on the very purpose of the University. It is not all about science, but the mission of the American University seems to have been vanquished by the Marxist progressive elites that call the shots in relationship to curriculum and emphasis. There are many rich topics within MacDonald’s treatment of this subject and one of those topics that I found most compelling was the emphasis on “profit” and growth of the “administrative” infrastructure within American Universities.
As someone that actively teaches in multiple Universities over many years, I have personally seen this administrative bloat. Large “trophy buildings” that are erected on campus, along with significant administrative protocols that are presented under the title of “measuring education effectiveness” take up valuable time by faculty that is constantly striving to teach within an environment that is more focused on measurements rather than educational outcomes tied to career and employability.
I highly recommend Heather’s book and I will be “teaching” from specific sections of the book for as long as I am able - it is after all, positioned against the orthodoxy of the current American Public University system.