Diversity of ethnic background?  Sure.  And it certainly would be comically interesting to be a homunculus listening in on just how the quota system at some of our most prestigious (past tense) universities is determined.  But as far as diversity of opinion goes – forget it.

Let me take two examples on wildly different ends of the political spectrum to illustrate the muzzle-minded P.C. fascist underbelly of the diversity mantra pumped out of our Ivy League and Ivy League wannabe academic institutions.

Here are the two recent headlines:

Prof who blamed Jews for 9/11 suspended from job

Houston Student Government VP Suspended For ‘All Lives Matter’ Facebook Post

At ultra-liberal Oberlin college?  Pretty daring, really.  The professor is a young black woman who is professor of rhetoric or some such.  Give Oberlin credit for being consistent.  Muzzle the left and right.  Students mustn’t hear anything bad about any ethnic group except white males.

Professor Joy Karega made a number of far-fetched claims about Jews on social media.  But so what?  Professor Karega should be judged on the quality of her academic work and not whether she holds weird personal opinions.  She should get the same treatment as a racecar driver – it doesn’t matter whether a racecar driver believes that the world is flat or not.  That is her opinion, and she is entitled to it – provided that in the classroom she does what she is hired to do and meets the academic/publishing standards of her university.  In fact, if she were professor of contemporary history or some such and maintained as much in the classroom and marshaled her facts and took up counterarguments – that would still be appropriate.

In the second case, a student is suspended for expressing his opinion outside the classroom.  He was not disrupting a class.  It is not even a weird opinion.  Even if it were, that is his right.  But he committed the cardinal sin of countering a meme of an “oppressed” minority.

Protecting students from even hearing diverse opinion is the very opposite of educating students to challenge their own ideological and largely unanalyzed cultural beliefs.  The university is producing little shrinking violets who break down or blow up when they hear an argument that runs counter to the P.C. kumbaya theory that in diversity there is harmony.  Actually, it is even worse than that.  The authenticity of an opinion is derived not from the evidence that can be marshaled in its support. but from its source – the more “oppressed” its minority origin, the greater its intrinsic truth.

Even the diversity-obsessed former mayor Michael Bloomberg got it right that diversity, limited to a quota system and forbidden in discourse and thought, is back-assward – and got booed for doing so.

The former New York City mayor gave a commencement speech at the University of Michigan and said the unthinkable:

The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure and shield students from these ideas through ‘safe spaces,’ ‘code words,’ and ‘trigger warnings’ is, in my view, a terrible mistake. The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations -- not run away from them.

The mayor went on to point out that there's danger in creating safe spaces on college campuses because they don't exist in the real world.  Then came the boos.

Under the banner of diversity, our universities are producing students who can’t handle diversity – real diversity, meaning diversity of opinion.