| Title | : | The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1250307775 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 978-1250307774 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Pocketbok |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 pages |
America is in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton? Oppressive. American history? Tyranny. Professors correcting grammar and spelling, or employers hiring by merit? Racist and sexist. Students emerge into the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these characteristics is the American experience. Speech that challenges these campus orthodoxies is silenced with brute force.
The Diversity Delusion argues that the root of this problem is the belief in America’s endemic racism and sexism, a belief that has engendered a metastasizing diversity bureaucracy in society and academia. Diversity commissars denounce meritocratic standards as discriminatory, enforce hiring quotas, and teach students and adults alike to think of themselves as perpetual victims. From #MeToo mania that blurs flirtations with criminal acts, to implicit bias and diversity compliance training that sees racism in every interaction, Heather Mac Donald argues that we are creating a nation of narrowed minds, primed for grievance, and that we are putting our competitive edge at risk.
But there is hope in the works of authors, composers, and artists who have long inspired the best in us. Compiling the author’s decades of research and writing on the subject, The Diversity Delusion calls for a return to the classical liberal pursuits of open minded inquiry and expression, by which everyone can discover a common humanity.
The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture Reviews
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I was inspired to purchase this book after having come upon a YouTube video in which the author, Heather Mac Donald, detailed some of the ideologically inspired lunacy that was taking place in modern academia. Now, this was not altogether new to me as I had been aware of such madness in universities for than two years, but the stories she told made me wonder if the academic world was beyond saving, and, by extension, Western culture and civilisation, for this disease has spread way beyond the university campus and infects almost every institution and workplace in the West. In this wonderful book, Heather examines the many false narratives of the left microaggressions; implicit bias training; campus rape culture and exposes them to the light of reason. We can only hope that reason wins out
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This is eye opening. I've always felt as a white male who up until recently identified with purely left wing ideoligy felt that I can't comprehend race and gender biases and that they must exist to such an extent for so many people in minority groups to feel oppressed, but what if the invisible oppression is merely that? What if it doesn't exist? What are the causes for relative "failure" by minority groups and are we really trying to help them? Are they really trying to help themselves? Can differences in groups be attributed by innate differences in those groups rather than due to direct oppression from the outside Word? Is it time to demolish the idea of groups and celebrate individual responsibility? Have we become so afraid to be racist in today's world that the only safe way to live is be racist enough to identify and favour those groups we don't belong to. I'm only half way through, but already this is something I would have benefitted from 10 years ago when I was trying to understand the supposed oppression we face.
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An extremely important and brilliantly written analysis of identity politics and its consequences. Should be prescribed reading in every high school !
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As in my “intro”, this book should be required reading for ALL faculty and administrators on US campuses. I literally read it in one sitting a rarity for me to do with a non fiction book. A cliché most certainly but I have an interest in this sector for several reasons. One is as part of a past multi career life, I served as a tenured professor at a large US SE university. Second I just revisited my own effete New England campus for my 50th reunion that was prefaced with my letters to fund raisers “why” my donations have and will remain minimal citing many of the author’s themes along with attending alumni lectures that attempted to justify so much of what is examined in this book.Ms Mac Donald adroitly puts “facts” to the fiction, failures and misdirection of so much of the nonsense now occurring on campuses (and very expensive failures too) instead of the actual work of education. Included are data driven critiques of the never ending quest for diversity (and THE big business of this venture), the often destructive nature of these policies, the extrapolations to society at large of this non stop emphasis, examining the “rape culture” that is said to be pervasive and so forth. And sadly in many ways it is a poignant eulogy for higher education in our country with nostalgic remembrances and allusions to the loss of what is now discarded from curricula given its centuries of formulations of bodies of academic work by a “ patriarchy of white heteronormative males ( I think I got the nomenclature right ?). The writer certainly has a strong base for this comparative lament given her own personal education pedigree of elite universities Yale, Cambridge and Stanford.I have a friend who is now a trustee at my old college and I will recommend that he do just this ask the faculty and administrators that he meets in those lofty interactions. But the predictable reaction ? I say they’ll recoil with crossed fingers and garlic cloves around their necks with a silver spike ready to go In fact I would expect THE same type of reaction to this book “on campus” as Ms Macdonald received in her attempts to speak in the University of California system as she describes. She too will be “Amy Wax ed” or whacked ( read the book ) but this time with book burnings of her work on campus. It would be so consistent of current campus times and the hypocritical respect for diversity of thought and tolerance supposedly resident in these environments.PS Heck I bet I get “censored” by the reviewers frankly for this review. That too is a manifestation of the carry overs from current education directions on campus creeping outside the ivy walls. I would imagine I have “micro aggressive” words and thought so push the “delete” button.
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It's about time counter points were presented. Refreshing that not everyone has jumped on the P.C. bandwagon. There is hope yet!