Robert Paquette, Charter Fellow of the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) comments below on the new diversity requirement at Hamilton College:
“Hamilton’s diversity requirement proves deeply troubling on multiple fronts. Frankly, Hamilton’s faculty has embarrassed itself, imposing on an open curriculum a requirement based on an ill-defined and highly politicized concept whose meaning was still being vigorously debated in faculty workshops as late as this summer. The operative principle seems to be impose first; think later. Can any honest or serious person who examines Hamilton’s course catalog claim there is a dearth of courses that fit the diversity rubric as now officially understood? The public arguments made for this requirement have already generated derision in national media. You have at least one department with unidentified members drawing up, Stalinist style, lists of approved courses, based not only on nebulous criteria, but on scanty or incomplete knowledge of course content itself. As this requirement is rolled out department by department, with–let us be truthful– political decisions being made every step of the way– the law of unintended consequences will click in and students might rightly ask themselves at the end, Is not this whole process at the very least inefficient? How precisely is this requirement adding value to me? One might also have hoped that in contemplating diversity, this faculty would be a bit more concerned about the scandalous lack of intellectual diversity on campus.”
Leave A Comment