The points "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring" and "Discontinuation of DEI" seem inconsistent. Enforcing "viewpoint diversity" is a DEI practice in all but name. Actually, it is even in the name. Also with the merit-based stuff, of course. What if people of merit skew towards certain viewpoints? Then hiring/admissions won't be merit based after all?

DEI has led to anything but viewpoint diversity, fostering ideological conformity via practices such as DEI statements, DEI metrics, mandatory trainings, or cancel culture leading to censorship.

That the current administration is also purging viewpoints it doesn't like, adopting the same authoritarian mindset, but having it enforced by the government (which is worse, IMO), that goes to show horseshoe theory is true.

Was this pedantry really worthwhile? The current interpretation of "diversity" is of outward characteristics, not points of view. So, technically, you're right. Kudos.

It is far from universally accepted that 'the current interpretation of diversity is of outward characteristics, not points of view'. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone who favors DEI aggrees with that statement.

Moreover, the actual interpretation of most proponents of diversity is very much that we desire a diversity of views, which it wants to get through getting a diversity of backgrounds. That is, of course, not the only reason behind DEI. There is also the fact that it is fair to allow people of all backgrounds the same opportunity.

Try talking about race as a white man during a DEI seminar. Unless you very carefully follow the approved messaging, you will be in trouble.

Nah, you're just confusing the KPI with the desire.

You get different viewpoints by having people with different sets of experience.

Differing gender, race, and socioeconomic backgrounds are drivers of different experiences, and therefore viewpoints. You can't easily measure "did this company hire different experiences", but you can easily measure "did this company hire a bunch of different genders, races, etc", which doesn't guarantee differing viewpoints in individuals, but does strongly suggest it in aggregate/at the statistical level.

This is so hilariously reductive it reads like satire. As if someone’s life experience can be deduced from their immutable characteristics.

It's the points of view that people are after when they promote diversity. The outward characteristics are at best a convenient proxy. Monocultures fail, diversity is a hedge against that.

That is absolutely not the case even for a moment. No white leftist seeks out black conservatives like Thomas Sowell. Not even for a moment. Leftism is a monoculture that uses cancelling as a way to force ideological uniformity.

While you are completely right about the impossible/conflicting legal standards here, this is not an unusual state of things. For example: it has been illegal to discriminate for a very long time, but it has also been de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population. So, they've always been faced with the problem of needing to either discriminate to get the numbers to match, or not discriminating and risking the numbers falling out of line. The real law has always been, and always will be, prosecutorial discretion. Whatever party is in control will choose whether they go after you or not, and they can because you're always violating one side of something.

de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population

The Trump administration mid level staffing decisions are something like 70%+ white men! This seems laughable. Controversial maybe, certainly not "illegal" or they wouldn't have done it.

You need to read what I wrote more carefully. The entire point is that whoever is in power decides which law actually gets applied and to whom. Do you think for some reason that the Trump administration risks being prosecuted by the Trump administration?

The executive branch is afforded some discretion, but the judicial system decides how law gets applied as directed by Congress when they write laws.

The entire point is that whoever is in power decides which law actually gets applied and to whom.

And that "entire point" is historically incorrect in the United States. There is a long, long, LONG history of the Department of Justice investigating and prosecuting members of the administration that technically runs it.

That your point seems to be correct now, in the most corrupt administration of the modern era, is something that is notable and worth discussing. It's certainly not something to sweep under the rug with a both-sides-ist dismissal.

We can quibble about the definition of "the administration", but the head of it a man who can pardon whomever he pleases for any federal crime he pleases. The very fact that any of these historical charges weren't instantaneously mooted with a pardon is self-evidence to me that all of these prosecutions were of former members of the administration who had fallen out if favor of the actual administration.

Classic No-True-Scotsman here: "Oh, well, sure, they were prosecuted in contravention of my point above. But that means they wanted to prosecute them."

(It's also tautological: I mean, of course they wanted to prosecute them. They were criminals and prosecutors prosecute criminals, definitionally!)

(And also also, it's an Occam's violation: the simpler explanation is that they were just treated like criminals and not that they were double-negative enforcement actions by a corrupt regime.)

Did that sound clever in your head? Again, the head of the executive branch can quash any charge he wants. You're the one contending that a person doing X is evidence that they support not-X.

it has also been de facto illegal to have demographic compositions substantially different from the general population

How so? To which law or case precedent?

Do you know what "de facto" means? I didn't say "de jure," and you're asking for de jure evidence.

Any law or policy that has a "disproportionate impact" on a protected class is subject to challenge, and will often lose in other public policy matters. I've not seen it happen in school demographics, though most, if not all, schools had some form of affirmative action policy until recently.

The "disparate impact" test applies mainly in civil rights act litigation, and it's extremely hard to make a case under that theory. It's a three-part test, and showing that a particular policy has a disparate impact on one race is just the first hurdle.

You also have to prove that the party acted with malice: either the policy exists for explicitly racist reasons, or the race-neutral justification is pretextual. If you can do that, you _also_ have to prove that there is a less-discriminatory alternative policy that achieves the same goal.

see, e.g., https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual7#C'

It is definitely not de facto illegal to have a racially lopsided student body -- the school might be asked to justify the specific policy or practice that led to that outcome on race-neutral grounds, but saying "GPA and test scores" would be more than enough.

Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.

I kind of hope they go through with this just for the comedy. If students and staff have to fill out some kind of viewpoint survey, the only rational strategy is for them to randomize their answers to minimize the chance of being in the group that gets told “sorry, we have too many of your type this year”.

I think the intent is to reduce the politically leftward trend in universities, as well as the fact that not all viewpoints are presented anymore. Universities used to be billed as a "marketplace of ideas".

Also, the hermeneutics used for interpreting literature on the fringes in the 1980s are now mainstream -- students aren't learning the methods of interpretation used everywhere in the west up until the turn of the century.

Or one can view it as the increasing intellectual vacuousness of ideas on the "right". (In quotes because the dividing line between left and right itself has shifted rightward over the years.)

This isn’t new. Buckley is the best they could manage in the entire last century or so, and that’s… not a great high water mark.

What about Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterton, Dorothy Sayer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or Josef Pieper?

These were in fact some of the intellectual greats of the 20th century. Like many today, they wouldn't necessarily closely identify with "the right" as much as they'd disagree with and argue against the current ideology of the left.

Tell me more about your seances with tolkien and lewis. Where did you have them? What's their favorite foods these days? Are they well?

Many authors poured their mind into their works such that simply reading their books makes it possible to know them pretty well. If you haven't tried it, I strongly suggest it :)

Since you called out Lewis -- one of my favorites is his The Abolition of Man and its narrative counterpart That Hideous Strength. They describe in exquisite, arguably prophetic detail many of the evils of the modern left, particularly how it has ushered in a progressive downfall of society through institutionalized lies.

The irony of you citing a work that critiques placing "subjective emotion over objective moral truths" and attempting to apply it to the "modern left" is almost physically painful.

You and everyone like you owe so much of your current life to the modern left that your ingratitude is astounding. The very computer you're using to send your words to me is a product of science and rational thinking that you seem to abhor.

As far as the "left", one need only consider the ideological rigidity around the topic of transvestites to see that specific, thoughtful, deep, data driven, and evidence based rhetoric is abandoned in favor of not hurting the feelings of a group of people prone to threaten harm to themselves for political and social gain.

Don't ever forget that the left cant clearly articulate what a woman is without resorting to circular reasoning.

This is probably pointless to reply to, but for anyone else reading this:

For starters, the current right-wing hate campaign is targeting transgender people, not transvestites since the latter simply means people who wear clothing associated with the opposite gender, which is quite common in right-wing circles.

Aside from that silliness, let's highlight the "specific, thoughtful, data driven, evidence based rhetoric" that is "not hurting the feelings of a group of people", as if "hurt feelings" were all that has happened.

Also, hurt feelings matter. Humans are our feelings. They're who we are and what we are. People be hurt in a large variety of ways and they're all bad. It's trivial to demonstrate that non-fatal gash on your body is considerably less worse than being, say, ostracized and outcast from the community you grew up in.

On a related note, why is "the right" so obsessed with defining what a woman is? What are the data driven and evidence based rhetorical reasons for coming up with a rigorous and definitive definition of woman?

The idea that evidence or logic is involved in any of this is laughable.

Edit: Nobody can come up with a good definition for what a planet it is either, but somehow we manage to stagger onwards.

Well, the evidence is that when males and females compete against each other in sport, the males tend to win, so if you think womens' sport should exist, then you need to define who is included and who is excluded from that category.

And when big males compete against small males the big ones tend to win, so uh, what are we arguing about?

Female only categories are always going to be a compromise, their literal existence is defined by excluding people from being able to participate. So you have to draw the line somewhere and say "this person is allowed and this person isn't". I'm sorry it's not as easy as just asking if someone has a uterus or something but just because things are tricky is no excuse to give up.

And frankly, this whole argument is incredibly disingenuous. You didn't give a damn about the sanctity of women's sports 5 years ago and when the right finds a new minority to demonize, you'll happily forget all about them.

There's a word for this, mote and bailey fallacy? The advanced premise is that we should discriminate and hate transgender people and then when challenged you fall back to something something women's sports.

Are women's sports good? Sure, we should support them. Is that worth demonizing a minority and blaming them for society's ills? I hope not. There's like 5 transgender people PER STATE competing in female only sports and 99% of the time they aren't even winning. It really doesn't affect you or anyone else.

But because of this "issue" that people like you keep repeating, people are trying to pass laws that require genital inspectors for our child athletes. Think about that for a second. What exactly are we trying to accomplish here?

The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, published a report on this recently. She examined the evidence and concluded that a protected female category is needed, at all levels of sport, to ensure fairness and - in contact sports - safety.

According to the research conducted for her report, the failure of governing bodies to exclude males from women's competitions has so far led to more than 600 female athletes losing out of 890 medals in 29 different sports - and this is likely to be a considerable underestimate.

Another adverse effect of male inclusion is that some female athletes, seeing the unfairness of this, will choose not to compete at all. Others will be displaced from qualifying for competition. By including males, governing bodies are excluding female athletes from what should be their own category.

The oft-repeated claim that it's just conservatives bringing up this issue is a false narrative, as is the incorrect assumption that this is being driven by "hate". Many people who have been speaking out on this - whether they're athletes themselves, UN officials, feminist activists, or simply just care about the wellbeing of women and girls - are doing so because they see the inherent unfairness and safety risks this imposes upon female athletes.

I don't understand why "rightward" viewpoints need affirmative action in the form of government regulations?

That's very reasonable.

Viewpoints are essentially grounded in actions, and actions are grounded in values or ways of being.

Values are acted out by individuals and groups through a relative hierarchy, and generally guide which actions are taken.

People generally consider what's true to be what works, and what works is relative to what action is being taken, and what action is being taken depends on the persons underlying values.

Because almost all of the universities' leadership has shifted far to the left side of the US political spectrum over the last 50 years, there is now a hostile environment to many right leaning values. You can argue that this was natural and that right leaning values are worse, but that would be unwise. There is good and bad in everything, and it's not helpful to over generalize. The reality is that there are both "good" and "bad" values on both sides of the political bias, but even that is probably too generalized. What makes a value good or bad is contextual. Some values are more helpful in certain situations or environments than others.

Even more important is that values don't naturally exist on one spectrum... The idea of "right" and "left" values is artificial.

So while I agree that the constriction of values being supported within universities is unhealthy like a stool that's had three legs chopped off, the idea that top down authoritarian enforcement on these organizations is the solution is somewhat terrifying.

Scary times.

Because almost all of the universities' leadership has shifted far to the left side of the US political spectrum over the last 50 years, there is now a hostile environment to many right leaning values. You can argue that this was natural and that right leaning values are worse, but that would be unwise. There is good and bad in everything, and it's not helpful to over generalize

Good lord that was a lot of words that said very little.

I'll try to be more concise and take an actual position: there's no such thing as a leftward shift, it's just people adopting the good ideas and abandoning the bad ideas.

The reality is definitely not that simple. There are many ideas that are good in one context and bad in others, but have been adopted (and imposed) far beyond the context they are good.

I've seen first hand many examples where leadership (within specific schools, probably with a highest concentration within liberal arts schools), consistently value the jobs of the faculty over the future wellbeing of the students. They don't value providing students with knowledge and skills that will make them successful in life after they graduate, and they do value growing their own staff and power within the organization. They value adding more rules and avoiding making any mistakes over taking risks and evolving the education to keep up with the rest of the world. Some of them value short-term benefits for themselves over long-term benefits of their students. I've seen this first hand on many occasions, so many it's beyond anecdote. It's not all bad, that's not my point, but to assume that all their judgement is perfect and they haven't made any mistakes and they have it all figured out and shouldn't reconsider anything... Well, that sounds more like faith and church to me. You're treating them like bishops not academics.

The topic of the conversation is the government requiring right-wing ideas be taught in schools. It has nothing to do with your anecdotes about educators valuing their own wellbeing over their students or whatever.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are schools and their professors perfect? Obviously not. Should they be improved? Sure. Is this trump driven ideological attack related to improving schools? Again, obviously not.

You stated: "I don't understand why "rightward" viewpoints need affirmative action in the form of government regulations?"

And I attempted to explain (steelman) why some people may feel that this is necessary. For the record I think that this government letter, the precedent for it, etc. are authoritarian, and I don't support it.

My point is that schools have drifted in the values they support, and distinctly away from politically right values (both the good ones and the bad ones), which has made America more fragile and led to an increase in authoritarianism. I am not condoning an authoritarian solution to the problem, but I am aware of and attempting to explain the problem, because I thought you were inviting an explanation.

Little did I know your "I don't understand" wasn't an expression of curiosity. This is a great example of expressing values, since I place a higher value on curiosity, and I guess you place a higher value on judgement?

how dare people slander the right like this. Are you saying you can’t make a right leaning argument without government help?

The right should have pride in their selves, and build their own universities, if not their own realities!

not all viewpoints are presented anymore. Universities used to be billed as a "marketplace of ideas".

That's true. Universities no longer present the viewpoint that black people are inferior to whites and deserve to be slaves. They no longer present the viewpoint that human health comes from the balance of the four humours. They no longer present the viewpoint that women are the property of their fathers/husbands. They no longer present the viewpoint that nature is fundamentally made up of earth, aire, fire, and water. How dare they abandon these ideas and still call themselves a "marketplace of ideas"! Hypocrisy!

Indulging in your blatant straw man argument for a moment, what if discussing these ideas and the downsides of them to society helped the world transition away from them faster and minimized the chance of backslide?

There is nothing wrong with discussing bad ideas, especially with students that aren't familiar with them, if done responsibly, with respect for the student, and facilitation of critical thinking.

This attitude that certain topics or ideas are taboo and shouldn't ever be acknowledged or discussed because they are bad is a big part of what is increasing extremism and pushing America to the brink. It's authoritarian, and it makes the nation more fragile, not stronger.

Is this an example of "one strawman deserves another"? You know that when GP talked about "presenting a viewpoint", he didn't mean "as an example of a bad idea that nobody should believe". He meant he wants alt-right talking points parroted to everyone because he's upset that reality has a liberal bias. You know this. You also know that I'm not suggesting outlawing the discussion of slavery in its historical context, but simply saying that universities have no obligation to make a case for failed and abhorrent ideas in the name of "diverse viewpoints". Why are you pretending like you don't know this already?

Your First Comment: "That's true. Universities no longer present the viewpoint that black people are inferior to whites and deserve to be slaves."

Your Later Comment: "You also know that I'm not suggesting outlawing the discussion of slavery in its historical context, but simply saying that universities have no obligation to make a case for failed and abhorrent ideas in the name of "diverse viewpoints"."

I am not American, Republican or even politically right. I am not your enemy. Please try and take the most respectful interpretation of what I am saying.

Your first and second comments I quoted above contradict each other.

The straw man I was referencing in your original post is how you pointed to the worst examples of "right" values. I indulged the examples you shared by stating even in those cases those ideas need to be explored fully in order to understand why they failed, so they are not repeated. I understand you are not advocating for these discussions to be outlawed, and I agree! I also don't advocate for these discussions to be forcefully imposed! However I do think that schools have evolved their curriculums to such an extent that many of these ideas are not adequately analyzed or represented within the programs offered, and the consequence is that it makes society weaker and more susceptible to the ideas resurfacing.

Also, I honestly don't know who GP is that you are referring to. I also don't know who you are, what you believe, or what you meant beyond the words you wrote in that one comment. I am not pretending anything. Just trying to point out how avoiding discussing certain ideas (by deliberately excluding them from curriculums), just because those ideas are "bad", is a problem that will have big long-term consequences, including the resurgence of those "bad" ideas (because the education system didn't inoculate people against them).

In your original comment that I responded to, it sounded like you were saying universities shouldn't discuss these ideas (including their subjective historical-context-dependent merits or correlated beliefs) at all. Now it sounds like you are saying that's not your stance. That's fine, you clarified your stance.

It's not helpful to assume that I should have known this was your stance all along and that I am pretending not to.

You are free to discuss any idea you want. I'm also free to call you an idiot and ask you to leave my house.

Please stop arguing that ideas should be free from criticism.

I am not arguing that ideas should be free from criticism. Not at all. Not sure how you got that idea.

I'm arguing that we shouldn't censor bad ideas, or exclude them entirely from the relevant discussions. And more to the point, when we educate the next generation we should be doing so in a holistic way so that they understand why and when bad ideas are bad, and why those ideas were ever popular in the first place.

I'm arguing against ideological censorship, not justified and well constructed criticism.

Let's start from the beginning. There is, by and large, no such thing as ideological censorship in american university settings. Ideas are free to be advanced and argued with.

Certain ideas have been so heavily criticized that people have stopped bringing them up. Criticizing a speaker at a college is not censorship, it's criticism and argument. Having a protest outside a speaker's event isn't censorship either, it's free speech.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here since perhaps you genuinely don't know that the people you're aligning your argument with are asking for their own ideas to be free from criticism.

This might be a good starting point: https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham...

This is sheer nonsense from the jump. Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. The very notion is completely incoherent. Someone else shaming me is their free speech, and someone else shunning me is their free association, both protected by the First Amendment.

When you bring up an abhorrent idea and I call you an idiot and ask you to leave, I'm not censoring you. If I refuse to invite you over next week, I'm still not censoring you. Nobody owes you a platform and demanding one is one of the more pernicious forms of free-speech-rights violations there are.

If students and staff have to fill out some kind of viewpoint survey, the only rational strategy is for them to randomize their answers to minimize the chance of being in the group that gets told “sorry, we have too many of your type this year”.

University students love messing with surveys.

My prediction: They'd coordinate to answer according to the groups they don't belong to. Right-leaning people would claim to be on the left. Left-leaning people would claim to be on the right.

I'm amazed this isn't flagged.

The earnest determination of segemnts of the HN comments "community" to prevent discussion of topics they don't agree with is almost as concerning as the actions of this adminstration.

This is such a great move by this administration. The Executive branch has been doing this for a long time across the nation. They use funding to pull strings and execute their views. This latest move is ad absurdum and the whole country will see how ridiculous it is that the President can demand a university (or any other body) do this or that... well guess what folks, you're right, and it has been going on for a long time. Look at the Dept of Education next. It needs to stop. The federal Executive Branch is way too large it is breaking the idea of independent states - incubators of ideas and democracy.