Signs of moderation in an age of ideological excess.
By James Freeman, WSJ April 2, 2024
Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. PHOTO: STEVEN SENNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
It’s not every day you see a Harvard law professor inveighing against requirements that potential faculty members submit “diversity, equity, and inclusion” statements along with their job applications. But here’s Randall Kennedy opining in the Harvard Crimson:
By requiring academics to profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom…
Playing ball entails affirming that the DEI bureaucracy is a good thing and asking no questions that challenge it, all the while making sure to use in one’s attestations the easy-to-parody DEI lingo. It does not take much discernment to see, moreover, that the diversity statement regime leans heavily and tendentiously towards varieties of academic leftism and implicitly discourages candidates who harbor ideologically conservative dispositions.
In addition to exerting pressure towards leftist conformity, the process of eliciting diversity statements abets cynicism. Detractors reasonably suspect that underneath the uncontroversial aspirations for diversity statements — facilitating a more open and welcoming environment for everyone — are controversial goals including the weeding out of candidates who manifest opposition to or show insufficient enthusiasm for the DEI regime.
Prof. Kennedy continues his harsh critique and says he’s far from alone in holding such views:
By overreaching, by resorting to compulsion, by forcing people to toe a political line, by imposing ideological litmus tests, by incentivizing insincerity, and by creating a circular mode of discourse that is seemingly impervious to self-questioning, the current DEI regime is discrediting itself.
It would be hard to overstate the degree to which many academics at Harvard and beyond feel intense and growing resentment against the DEI enterprise because of features that are perhaps most evident in the demand for DEI statements. I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice. The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince. The practice of demanding them ought to be abandoned, both at Harvard and beyond.
Also noteworthy is another opinion piece—one that’s bouncing around the world of nonprofit activists—that also appears to reject leftist excess. But it’s a little harder to know what to make of this one. Rachel Pritzker, a member of a prominent Democratic family, writes in the Chronicle of Philanthropy:
Twenty years ago, in the mid-2000s, I was a partisan warrior, and my philanthropy was entirely dedicated to pursuing my ideological beliefs. At the time, I served as a founding board member of the Democracy Alliance, a network of philanthropists focused on advancing a progressive policy agenda.
But at a certain point, I came to see that my efforts, under the banner of “democracy,” were actually furthering the decline of democracy. Our passionate advocacy, while aimed at strengthening the country, was contributing to mounting gridlock and toxic partisanship. Democratic elected officials felt increasingly pressured to adhere to party orthodoxy rather than passing legislation through compromise, lest they be primaried by a progressive group for being insufficiently pure…
Democracy is not the same thing as our preferred political or policy outcomes... We must stand up for our views and contest them in the political arena. But at the same time, we must agree with our adversaries on the rules of the game. If we conflate our policy views with democracy and call opposing positions “undemocratic,” it is more likely that both we and our opponents will be tempted to declare new rules that restrict the other’s rights. It is thus urgent that supporters of liberal democracy clearly distinguish our policy preferences from the rules of a free and open society.
This all seems very healthy but Ms. Pritzker also writes:
In this moment of autocratic threat, when authoritarian leaders in the United States and around the world are trying to divide and weaken the public, a united front is precisely the antidote for upholding our democracy.
The alleged authoritarians aren’t named. But there does seem to be a risk here that if she’s not careful Ms. Pritzker could end up calling her political opponents “authoritarian” instead of “undemocratic” and end up making the same mistake again.
Perhaps she should consider applying no labels.
Speaking of labels, it’s also at least theoretically possible that the term “progressive” could be seized by people who actually seek progress, rather than just power. Ronald Bailey writes in Reason magazine about a number of new groups with “Progress” in their names, including one effort involving Ms. Pritzker as well as others that seem to have a more libertarian bent.
Among the various potential new claimants to the title “progressive,” a number profess to welcome the benefits generated by technological advancements that flourish in free societies. Imagine that! This is in contrast to the ideology of activists who have long had a hammerlock on the label “progressive.” Mr. Bailey writes:
Contemporary progressives trace their ideological lineage back to the Progressive movement that arose in American politics around the turn of the 20th century… Fundamental then as it is today among modern progressives is their certainty that they know the direction in which “progress” must go and that exercise of government power guided by a technocratic elite is central to achieving their version of “progress.” Princeton University historian Thomas C. Leonard observes that early 20th century “progressives believed in a powerful, centralized state, conceiving of government as the best means for promoting the social good and rejecting the individualism of (classical) liberalism.” In addition, he says, they believed in “the disinterestedness and incorruptibility of the experts who would run the technocracy they envisioned, and a faith that expertise could not only serve the social good, but also identify it.”
What would we do without experts?
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