Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Diversity and Georgetown: How Far Away Were We’

Recent Criticisms of Georgetown Faculty, Community Prove Inaccurate

By Robert Swope Sed Contra

U nder the siren calls of Georgetown’s new gods, ” diversity,” “sensitivity” and “tolerance,” a movement spearheaded by the campus left is now afoot. At stake is the very existence of student intellectual life and the educational mission of the university as traditionally understood. Now, as a result of the recent acts of vandalism in which a few ignorant students mindlessly promulgated a personal philosophy that to all rational beings is self-evidently corrupt, a new but equally pernicious group of individuals has arisen who are dedicated to promoting an ideology of victimization that, at base, is predicated upon the simple-minded notion that Georgetown’s faculty and most of the students who go here are intrinsically racist.

Among the proposals suggested by members of this group are “sensitivity training” seminars for faculty and mandatory “diversity courses” for students, all done in the name of providing an “open” and “tolerant” academic community. Not only are these proposals condescending and disrespectful to students, faculty and minorities in general, but also they are derived illegitimately from the hysteria created in the aftermath of the vandalism caused by only a few of the approximately 6,000 students who attend Georgetown.

The idea that all faculty members undergo “sensitivity training” seminars implicitly states that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way they now teach or deal with students. If this is really the case, why haven’t any faculty members been exposed and disciplined for insensitivity or discrimination? Could it be that no substantive examples of such actions exist and that rather than truly desiring faculty who are by all accounts sensitive to the needs of minority students, those behind the proposals possess ulterior motives?

Entrenching the therapeutic belief that all minorities are oppressed and all American institutions oppressive seems to be a likely answer. With such notions firmly in place, it then becomes possible, through guilt and moral indignation, to demand privileged treatment in the form of special policies and programs (such as affirmative action) that directly benefit the individuals making the demands.

Sensitivity, like all other concepts, is only good up until a point. When sensitivity becomes poisonous is when it is used to dismantle an environment of free political discourse and when a person’s own opinion of sensitivity is turned into an entitlement to never be disagreed with or offended. Often times, sensitivity is twisted into forcing others to agree to a particular political agenda in the hopes of avoiding being assigned the label of insensitive, or worse yet, intolerant. Like tolerance (a true understanding of which requires sitting at a table and listening to the other side speak and which, despite what some may otherwise claim, is not the repression of other persons’ opinions, however disgusting they may be) and diversity, sensitivity has now become synonymous with coercing people into following the ideological agendas of the radical left.

Diversity, rightly understood, is not the melanin bean counting commonly found in admissions and hiring, nor is it the categorical examination of authors of every identity group that is seen in the curriculum, solely for the sake of having someone of a different gender or color represented. True diversity consists in the diversity of ideas. It puts together an intellectually heterogeneous group of individuals and creates an environment of free, reasoned and intense academic debates.

Diversity is not an end and by itself possesses no inherent value. Rather, it is a means to discovering and coming to know through the process of the dialectic, the truth of things. Whether or not an idea has merit is based not upon the background of the individual but whether it can hold up to the intellectual scrutiny that all ideas must be held to if they are to be considered of any academic value. It is this type of diversity that universities, if they are to be institutions dedicated to educating men and women of reason and discernment, must preserve.

While requiring students to study non-Western cultures, when properly implemented, can be an entirely noble and worthwhile activity, such a course, while appropriately acknowledging it, should not unnecessarily dwell on people’s history of oppression, which then leads to a victimist mentality, and much of which is done in an ideological desire to deligitimize Western civilization. To truly study another culture, one must be exposed to how its members provided answers to the enduring questions of mankind: How do you live a good life? Does God exist? What does this reality of ours mean and what is its purpose? It requires the study of another culture’s Plato, Dante and Shakespeare. In the course of such study, one need not embark into a game of “let’s pretend” and delve into the nihilistic relativism of assuming that the great texts are spread evenly among all cultures.

It is one of the tasks of the university, and the true task of multiculturalism, to expose students to other civilizations in the hopes of enlarging the body of knowledge from which students may draw so that they may find suitable answers to questions about the nature of man, how one should live life or in what way the best political regime is ordered. This is the end of diversity that Georgetown must strive to attain, and in so doing, reject the opinions of those who wish to revolutionize the university and seem intent on institutionalizing a superficial diversity in the hopes of turning this educational establishment into an institution no longer concerned with merely educating students but bent on implementing the political and social goals of the state.

Sed Contra appears every other Tuesday in The Hoya.

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