Two opposing views on DEI. Which do you favor? A couple of days ago, I read two newspaper articles on DEI, one in the Wall Street Journal, and the other in USA Today (the latter was originally published in the Louisville Courier Journal). The opinions of the writers are crystal clear from the titles of their articles.

First Article

Professor Kevin Jon Williams wrote Why I’m Saying No to NIH’s Racial Preferences. (Dr. Williams is a physician, a professor of cardiovascular sciences at Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine, and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm). Dr. Williams’s article made me thankful that my dependence on research grants from the National Institutes of Health ended decades ago when I closed that phase of my life. How things have changed at the NIH since then! I learned from this article that the NIH now has a little DEI box to check. Dr. Williams objects to that. Here is what he writes about his upcoming NIH grant application:

My quandary comes down to whether I should “check the box” on an upcoming NIH grant application attesting to my recent African heritage. Since at least 2015, the NIH has asserted its belief in the intrinsic superiority of racially diverse research teams, all but stating that such diversity influences funding decisions. My family’s origins qualify me under the federal definition of African-American. Yet I feel it’s immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application and the body of my work, which is generally accepted as foundational in atherosclerosis research.

Here are other pertinent excerpts of his article:

The NIH’s recent announcement commands applicants “to recruit individuals from diverse backgrounds, including individuals from underrepresented groups for participation in the study team.”

I’m angry at the National Institutes of Health for putting me in this position. I’m even angrier it has done so in the name of racial equity. (Dr. Williams, through his father, is part Bantu, a major ethnolinguistic grouping in West, Central and Southern Africa.)

My Opinion

I am firmly in Dr. Williams’s camp. NIH should fund the best research proposals, and not simply provide monies partly based on the race of the applicants. That approach likely squeezes out funding for some of the best scientific approaches. Beyond that, it is tinged with racism. The goal of NIH should be achieve scientific advancement, not to meddle in affirmative action.

Second Article

Professor Ricky L. Jones wrote Colleges exploit Black athletes for March Madness. It’s time to boycott anti-DEI universities, (Dr. Jones is a professor of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville.)

Dr. Jones is a proponent of DEI. He begins by quoting an article by University of Southern California Professor Shaun Harper, and writing, “He rightfully points out that Black people represent a disproportionate percentage of college student-athletes who populate the high-revenue sports of basketball and football at predominantly white institutions, both nationwide and in states that are against diversity.”

Magically, deceptive anti-DEI advocates and politicians never bring this up. Why? Maybe because these Black boys make white-controlled athletic conferences, universities, coaches, athletic directors, university presidents, television networks and others insane amounts of money.

Another obvious fact

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to point out to Dr. Jones that he too fails to bring up an obvious fact, namely that the only place that DEI had never taken hold in most universities is in their athletic teams. If DEI were applied to college basketball, football, track, and other sports, two outcomes would be inevitable. Outcome 1: the quality of any given college sport would decline (as would professional sports if DEI invaded there as well), and Outcome 2: fewer black athletes would receive scholarships. Neither of these would appeal to me, nor, I assume, would they to Dr. Jones.

I also think that Dr. Jones would agree with me on another issue, that being the obvious fact that black children in this country receive overall an inferior education in their early school years when compared with white children. The solution for that, in my opinion, is to improve their early schooling. I’ve discussed this point elsewhere (see here).

Dr. Jones raises points we need to be aware of, but I believe much of his article is more of a ranting screed rather than a thoughtful analysis of our current situation. Here are two more paragraphs from his article.

Be clear, student-athletes will lose if they are left to stand alone – and they will in most cases as many fearful Black administrators, faculty and staff have muzzled themselves on PWI campuses (predominantly white institutions). The ball players are completely unprepared for the assaults of white supremacy. They are too young and largely anesthetized by flawed education and socialization.

Like most miseducated, misled and cowed Black people, they cannot adjust when debates dive into history, political ideology and structural marginalization – or outright ignore core grievances and alter the discussions altogether.

My Opinion

I believe that college athletic programs should recruit the best student-athletes available, and yes, they more likely will be Black than white (to use Dr. Jones capitalization preferences). By the same token, I believe that college student admissions, and equally important, college faculty appointments, should also be based on the best applicants available. In blunt terms, that means that the decision should be colorblind, that applicant’s race should not enter into the decision. The vital element should be ability and past performance. Unfortunately that often is not the case in present-day academia.

Again, I will stress that the place where many Black students are slighted is in their early years of education. That is where racial differences come into play, and this is where action is desperately needed. How that goal can be achieved is open to interpretation, but I would suggest that Dr. Jones, Black Lives Matter, and all fair-minded groups, focus their attention on that problem. Having said that, readers of this blog know that I’m not a fan of governmental intervention. President Johnson’s war on poverty, much of it still in play some six decades after its inception, has done little to influence poverty, and essentially nothing to improve early Black education.

Regarding the specific effects of using DEI in faculty employment and advancement, I submit that it has produced negative results. One prime recent bit of evidence is the case of Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned early this year over furor of her handling of on-campus antisemitism, along with lingering charges of her plagiarism. Nevertheless, she remains on campus as a professor, earning nearly $900,000 annually. 

What puzzles me is how she got the job in the first place. According to various media sources, she has been accused of  more than 40 instances of plagiarism in her academic work, apparently starting with her thesis (see example above). I cannot imagine someone with her history (or anyone of any race) ascending to the presidency of Harvard without a strong whiff of DEI in that person’s corner.

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Dr. Gay, before becoming Harvard’s president, expanded diversity bureaucracies and chilled free speech on that campus by creating new DEI positions and creating a task force that recommended portraits of white men be taken down (see here).

Damaged Harvard brand

Clearly, her plagiarism has damaged Harvard’s brand, first of all for elevating a person with suspect credentials to its presidency, and second because Harvard is strict about student plagiarism. To illustrate, here are two excerpts from the Harvard Guide to Using Sources:

“It is expected that all homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers, theses, and examinations and any other work submitted for academic credit will be the student’s own. Students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources. The term “sources” includes not only primary and secondary material published in print or online, but also information and opinions gained directly from other people. Quotations must be placed properly within quotation marks and must be cited fully. . . .

Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College.”

Consequences

The above rules do have consequences. For example, during the 2020-2021 school year (the latest year I found), Harvard forced 27 students to withdraw from the college, a number of them for plagiarism. It is difficult for me to understand why Harvard students are being forced to withdraw from their college for not distinguishing “their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources,” while a Harvard professor, who clearly has not distinguished her words from others, continues to hold her position and collect nearly $900,000 per year.

Is Diversity necessarily positive?

This is a key question, but one must first ask, diversity of what? If one speaks of diversity of opinion, I would say it is absolutely positive, especially in higher education (where sadly it is lacking, and leaning heavily leftist and woke). On the other hand, if one speaks of genetic diversity, one might pause to consider the deep conflicts that develop between individuals of different ideologies, such as those favoring either Israelis or Palestinians, Russians or Ukrainians, Chinese or Taiwanese,  Hutu or Tutsi tribes, or choose your own example. I think it is obvious that combining individuals with differing preexisting biases would be unlikely to produce an especially harmonious unit.

My Personal Conclusions

1. DEI is a form of discrimination that, by its very nature, can only lower the quality of whatever type of organization is involved, be it educational, scientific, governmental, or economic.

2. Racial discrimination has been rampant in the past, but simply changing the race or races to be discriminated against (through Affirmative Action and DEI effects on new generations) does nothing to assuage the pains of past wrongs; rather, it simply embraces a new form discrimination.

3. Most black children today continue to receive inferior early educations, and thus many fall behind. This clearly is where the problem lies. Give these children the education they deserve, and they will effortlessly compete with other races.  I submit this as the path to become a truly colorblind country, and to provide liberty and justice for all.