Administrators and faculty are quick to appeal to and develop programs around “diversity.” But what is diversity? It is neither a virtue, nor a basic good, nor even a generally pos
Nowadays there are no conservatives or libertarians in most academic departments in the humanities and social sciences. (See Langbert, Quain, & Klein, 2016 for more recent findings
The five questions put to our panel provide a suitable framework for my reflections. 1. Does the Constitution require or presuppose, or thwart or even forbid, a formative project o
The word ‘pluralism’ generally refers to the view that there are many of the things in question (concepts, scientific world views, discourses, viewpoints etc.) The issues arising f
We talk as if there are lots of different values, like friendship, love, knowledge, and honesty, but that could be misleading. Perhaps these apparently different values are all red
An international feminism that is going to have any bite quickly gets involved in making normative recommendations that cross boundaries of culture, nation, religion, race, and cla
The splendour of truth shines forth in all the works of the Creator and, in a special way, in man, created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26). Truth enlightens man's i
The SecondVatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom,has recovered the deepest patrimony of the
Like a number of terms that have come to prominence in recent social and political discourse, ‘diversity’, along with ‘identity’ and ‘multiculturalism’, is commonly used not as a neutral term of sociological description, but as a title for a set of recommended normative views. In the ordinary descriptive usage a group might be said to be ‘diverse’ in respect any number of features: age, weight, physical ability, mental aptitude, education, culture, beliefs, interests, etc. As such, it would be an open question whether a group’s being diverse, similar, or uniform in any or all of these respects is good, bad or indifferent – and similarly for ‘identity’ and ‘culture’. In the current socio-political usage, however, there are two unstated assumptions: a) that only certain features count so far as diversity is concerned, and b) that diversity in respect of these is valuable. So, for example, ethnic, sexual, and/or cultural variety count, and are held to be desirable; but diversity of opinions about whether these are important or about the value of diversity do not. This might be termed ‘the paradox of diversity advocacy’. The rationale of advocating for it is the belief that existing features of society, specifically ones that manifest traditional norms of identity are unjust. Hence the linking of diversity advocacy with criticisms of ‘heteronormativity’, ‘the cultural canon’, ‘xenophobia’, ‘white privilege’ etc. One deep issue raised by diversity, most often discussed in relation to multiculturalism, is how far it can extend without undermining the coherence and unity necessary for the stable existence of society.