Comment by nailer
5 days ago
No, I have no hesitation. How are you not finding it obvious that the government are trying to end racially based admittance programs?
5 days ago
No, I have no hesitation. How are you not finding it obvious that the government are trying to end racially based admittance programs?
Because I read the letter from the government to Harvard. Did you? Racially-based admittance is only one bullet out of ten. The government isn't demanding specific policy changes, they are demanding cultural and ideological control of the university.
Did you? As you can read, they tackle racial bias immediately and follow up with preventing advocacy for terrorism and racism, then viewpoint divergence. At no point are they arguing for a single viewpoint to exist, they are CONSISTENTLY doing the exact opposite:
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.
> The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.
I'm all for pluralism. I have no objection at all to the existence of as many conservative academics as you please or whole (private) universities explicitly committed to conservative ideology. But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds. And it's also a super-ultra-clear first amendment violation to compel the speech of a private institution.
Finally, I'd like to point out the rank hypocrisy of calling for "merit-based" hiring and admissions in one breath, and then in the next demanding a quota system for ideology: "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity." The government, as conservatives are so fond of saying, shouldn't "pick winners."
If there are a "critical mass" of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber professors out there looking for a position they should start their own university and admit that critical mass of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber students.
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