Male Leads in Fiction Sell 10 Million More Books on Average Than Female Leads
If diversity is bad business, just blame sexism and force it through anyway
Cambridge may drop BAME mentoring of white academics - "Cambridge University may scrap a controversial mentoring scheme to help senior white academics and managers tackle institutional racism because some of those involved have failed to take its work seriously.Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff (BAME) who “reverse-mentored” senior white colleagues also found participating in the scheme to be a burden... The pilot scheme, which paired BAME mentors with white senior academics and managers, including the vice-chancellor, Prof Stephen Toope, was launched last year in a bid to encourage “institutional change” and address structural racism at the university. The aim was to equip senior white staff with the confidence and skills to challenge racism when they came across it"
The jargon of diversity - "for all the talk of diversity, for many activists, academics and commentators it remains a stubbornly distant objective. Their refrain is unchanging: ‘More needs to be done.’... Diversity is a cause, a mission, a raison d’etre.We know what diversity means in this context. It means the inclusion of more members of the officially approved identity categories in those management positions, that TV drama, this police force – all so as to make that company, that show, that state agency, more representative of our ‘diverse’ society. It is a project ripe for old-style Marxist critique. As Adolph Reed Jr points out, the jargon of diversity ultimately legitimates existing class relations. It renders the ruling class’s position just, ‘provided that roughly 12 per cent of [the ruling class] were black, 12 per cent were Latino, 50 per cent were women’, and so on. But, as Russell Jacoby’s incisive new book On Diversity reveals, there’s another problem with the jargon of diversity: it mystifies an increasingly uniform reality. ‘We differ in pose’, he says, ‘and resemble each other in fact’. The inclusion of members of this or that identity group in a corporate boardroom gives the appearance of difference. But it’s still ‘different-looking people doing the same things as other people’... individuality is the moral core of On Liberty. Not the limits on state authority, or even the freedom to speak and think as one chooses. They are conditions, not the goal. The goal, as Mill put it, is to allow the individual to flourish, ‘to grow and develop itself on all sides'... That is the promise of On Liberty. A society in which, if people are given freedom, and a ‘variety of situations’, individuality can flourish, in all its eccentricity, originality, and, yes, diversity. And it is the promise of the Wilde of The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and even, at points, Marx, both of whom envisage a future society that will allow for the ‘full development of the individual’ – a society, that is, in which creative self-expression ceases to be the preserve only of the artist.This is a vision of diversity entirely at odds with that fostered by the jargon today. The jargon speaks of groups, while denying the diversity of individuals"
Wells Fargo CEO apologizes for comments about diversity - "Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf apologized Wednesday for comments he made suggesting it is difficult to find qualified Black executives in the financial industry."
Of course, skin colour is a sufficient qualification
Google’s Head Of Diversity Fired Over Anti-Semitic Blog Post - "Google’s head of diversity, Kamau Bobb, has been fired after an anti-Semitic blog written by him in 2007 surfaced... Discussing the systematic displacement of the Palestinian people in 2007, Bobb went on to make offensive remarks about Jewish people. Bobb wrote in his personal blog that Jewish people had an ‘insatiable appetite for war’"
Fake news - he got redeployed, not fired from Google. It's telling that so many people in the diversity industry are actually racist, sexist etc.
The shocking woke blindspot for anti-Semitism - "Kamau Bobb had, until recently, one of the wokest jobs in the world. He was head of diversity at Google – one of the wokest companies in a very woke tech sector. Woke types like to present themselves as opponents of all forms of bigotry. But Bobb unwittingly revealed one of the great blindspots of self-professed ‘anti-racists’, when a 2007 blog post he wrote came to light... He added that Jews should have more ‘sympathy and compassion’ because of their experience of the Holocaust. To make matters worse, Bobb published his blog post on the anniversary of Kristallnacht – the night in 1938 when Nazi militia thugs trashed Jewish businesses and beat up Jews... woke identity politics doesn’t only treat anti-Semitism as a less serious form of racism — it can also encourage anti-Semitism. Some who hold the woke worldview have a worrying tendency to see Jews as powerful and privileged – unlike other minorities, who are cast as victims. Of course, it is inconceivable that a head of diversity would talk about any other ethnic group in the way he did about the Jews"
Actually a head of diversity would plausibly talk about white people in the same way: anti-white racism and anti-Semitism are very similar
Swedish Greens: White Women Must 'Move' For Foreigners To Take Power - "Swedish Green Party spokeswoman Märta Stenevi has claimed that in order for foreign minority women to get power in Sweden, native-born white Swedish women must move aside... According to Stenevi, there is an “alarming trend” of Swedish men becoming more conservative and that they think Sweden is already “equal” enough as it is today... When asked why so many women vote for the Greens compared to men, Stenevi stated that power may be a factor and stated that those with “privileges” may feel threatened over a new division of power. Going even further, she stated that not only must Swedish men give up on power, but native-born Swedish white women must do so as well... Similar comments have been made in the past by members of the Swedish Green Party, such as in 2018 when local Green Party members in the town of Eslöv suggested that native Swedes who had a problem with multiculturalism should just leave... in the southern region of Skåne, the Greens made headlines again after suggesting that in the wake of the anti-mass migration, pro-family Polish government oversaw the introduction of new restrictions on abortions, Swedish taxpayers should foot the bill for Polish women to have abortion procedures in Sweden."
Apparently it's racist to tell immigrants to leave, but not natives
Canada's military to adopt gender-neutral dress code as it moves to diversify ranks | Toronto Sun - "The Canadian Armed Forces will soon adopt a gender-neutral dress code for service members as military commanders push for more diversity in the ranks. Men and women in uniform are currently subject to separate dress codes that include the types of clothing they can wear as well as hair styles and other aspects of their appearance. Maj.-Gen. Lise Bourgon, the acting chief of military personnel, says the new gender-neutral standard will give members more choices while ensuring they are still dressed safely and appropriately for their duties."
If wearing a skirt doesn't stop a woman from being a proper soldier, why would it stop a man?
Mohamed Salah has caused Islamophobia in Liverpool to fall since joining club, study finds - "Research by Stanford University found an 18.9 per cent drop in anti-Muslim hate crimes on Merseyside in the period since Salah signed for Liverpool in June 2017, in a £34m transfer from Roma. No other offence had a comparable drop in the same timeframe, while anti-Muslim tweets by Liverpool fans halved compared to other major Premier League clubs."
Maybe this will be used to force through quotas. But given the dodgy methodology of "hate crimes"...
Jesse Kelly on Twitter - "REMINDER: You can tell how much you truly care about something by how “inclusive” you want it to be. If your child needed emergency brain surgery, you wouldn’t care about the color or gender of the surgeon. You’d want the best. If you want it “inclusive” you don’t care about it"
Luther and the ‘authenticity’ trap - "Being diverse no longer means including difference. Instead, the ideal of diversity is being replaced by a rigid commitment to ‘authenticity’. Rather than promoting the idea that variety, range and a refusal to fit into the old boxes are positive things, diversity chiefs now spend most of their time trying to pigeon-hole and strictly define what kind of ‘diversity’ is acceptable. BBC crime drama Luther is the latest victim of the diversity chiefs’ acceptability test. Starring Idris Elba as the classic handsome-but-mysterious top cop, Luther captivated British audiences from its debut in 2010 until its most recent outing in 2019. Elba won numerous awards for the role. Yet according to the BBC’s diversity manager, Miranda Wayland, Luther felt inauthentic in the way it portrayed its black lead... 'he doesn’t have any black friends, he doesn’t eat any Caribbean food, this doesn’t feel authentic.’ Wayland said diversity isn’t just about seeing diverse faces on screen; it’s about ‘making sure that everything around them – their environment, their culture, the set – is absolutely reflective’. Wayland is half right. Much of the contemporary focus on diversity does feel superficial. Companies institutionalise 50/50 gender policies to make sure they won’t be snubbed by right-on customers. Discussions about representation in relation to race, gender or sexuality often feel like tick-box exercises. The focus is too often on ensuring that things look inclusive from the outside, rather than thinking through the real importance and benefits of increasing opportunities for everyone regardless of their background. Yet when it comes to the arts and to shows like Luther, it’s hard to tell what people like Wayland really want. Would she have been happier if Elba stepped out of his suit and wore something more authentically Caribbean? What does it even mean to be authentically black? The BBC Three comedy series Famalam got into trouble last August for its depiction of Jamaicans. In one sketch, contestants on ‘Jamaican Countdown’ end up smoking a joint, grinding on each other and causing trouble. The fact that the show’s actors and writers were a mix of Africans and Caribbeans did not mean it escaped controversy. A spokesperson for the Global Jamaica Diaspora Council said, ‘Famalam is offensive and unbecoming in multicultural UK where Black Lives Matter’. One of the show’s actors, Tom Moutchi, said people needed to get a grip: ‘We’re not trying to single out or outrage anyone – we are just poking fun at our truths and stereotypes.’ Authenticity can be important, but a fetishisation of authentic portrayal can be limiting. The beauty of fiction – from great literature to pop-culture shows like Luther – is in the creation of a free imaginative space. Yet now, with sensitivity readers and quotas on which kind of people should get published, everything feels more restrictive and fixed. As Zadie Smith told an audience in 2019, the obsession with identity can be a ‘huge pain in the arse’. ‘If someone says to me: “A black girl would never say that”, I’m saying: “How can you possibly know?” The problem with that argument is it assumes the possibility of total knowledge of humans. The only thing that identifies people in their entirety is their name: I’m a Zadie.’ The constant focus on diversity is endangering artistic freedom. Neil Cross, the creator and writer of Luther, replied to Wayland’s criticism with bemusement: ‘It would have been an act of tremendous arrogance for me to try to write a black character. We would have ended up with a slightly embarrassed, ignorant, middle-class, white writer’s idea of a black character.’ The truth is that throughout Luther’s dazzling success, neither Cross nor Elba, nor the millions of fans that tuned in to the show, gave a second thought to the need for John Luther to be more authentically black. We should remember that diversity is about difference, not conformity. If artistic creators feel hamstrung by a fear of failure on the issue of authenticity, then we will end up repeating the mistakes of the past when difference really was discriminated against."
Woke capitalism, or genuine concern for racial and ethnic diversity? - "A friend, who has enjoyed a long and very successful career in investment management, recounts a telling story of his experience sitting on the board of an ethical investment fund. At one stage, the fund's screening committee – which decides the assets that fund is allowed to buy and the ones that are prohibited – formed the view the fund should not buy bonds of any government that spent money on its military, because this encouraged war. Because Canberra allocates a sizeable chunk of money each year to defence spending, this would have precluded the fund from buying Australian government bonds. Indeed, it would have been near-impossible for the fund to run a sensible fixed income investment strategy if it was forced to eschew the bonds of any country imprudent enough to have a defence budget. Eventually, my friend was able to orchestrate a pragmatic compromise: the fund would not buy the bonds of countries that were actively attacking other countries, but it could buy the bonds of countries where the military spending was primarily for defensive purposes. The story came to mind as the giant US asset manager State Street unveiled its latest initiative to put pressure on boards to embrace greater racial and ethnic diversity. At this point, State Street's $US3.1 trillion ($4 trillion) investment arm is only calling on companies to disclose the racial and ethnic composition of their boards. But beginning next year, it will also vote against the chair of the nominating and governance committees of companies that don't have at least one minority board member. State Street's threat applies to all companies in the US S&P 500 and the FTSE 100, and carries a major punch. Many of these companies count the index fund giant as one of their largest shareholders. This isn't State Street's first push to stir up change in stuffy corporate corporate boardrooms. Since 2017, the giant US fund manager has been pushing big companies to put more women on their boards, initially targeting boards with no female directors. And hundreds of companies have responded by adding at least one woman to their boards. State Street was also responsible for the "Fearless Girl" statue that stared down Wall Street's iconic bull in downtown Manhattan – it has since been moved to just across from the New York Stock Exchange – which was seen as a potent symbol of gender diversity. And of course State Street is not the only massive US investment manager putting pressure on corporate boards over environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager with $US7.8 trillion in assets under management, last year pledged to put environmental sustainability at the heart of its investment decision-making process... Many worry this is a classic case of corporate wokeness – where the gesture is used as a substitute for genuine change... "It is disgraceful to promote one or two elite members from an ethnic minority and then to pretend that this is a serious attempt to address economic inequality." There's also unease about State Street's plans to impose its rules on companies outside the US. "It's one thing for State Street to apply this in the US, but to require people in other countries to follow it is very arrogant"... Others are uneasy that State Street appears to be losing sight of the fact its key priority is to deliver strong investment returns for investors... "You could possibly argue that if you haven't got an ethnically diverse board, customers aren't going to buy your product, but I'm not sure we've reached that point yet. "I think the average consumer barely knows which company made the particular product, let alone the ethnic composition of its board."... Sceptics, however, point out that it is important to look closely at these studies to see whether having a more racially diverse board actually improves performance, or whether strongly performing companies decide they have the capacity to cater to diversity concerns... One investment manager points out it will help State Street to differentiate itself from other large passive fund managers that provide very similar investment products.. "Investment returns are one thing, but if you haven't got a story to go with them, you've got nothing to hang your clothes on," he says. "If you can demonstrate that your investment performance is good, and you've also got a good story to sell, you're in a much better position." He adds that having a high-profile commitment to ESG causes also gave fund managers a handy excuse when their investment performance suffered."
Is diversity truly a societal strength? - "However great the shock of the massacre in Orlando, it is only a matter of time before we start hearing again the fact-free dogma that "diversity is our strength." If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, "diversity" should be a prime candidate. Is diversity our strength? Or anybody's strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan's homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times? Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization? "When in Rome do as the Romans do" was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don't knuckle under to foreign religious standards. The recent wave of refugees flooding into Europe include Muslim men who have been haranguing European women on the streets for not dressing modestly enough, not to mention their sexual molestation of those women. Smug elites in Europe, like their counterparts in America, are not nearly as concerned about such things as they are about preventing "Islamophobia." Legal restrictions on free speech in some European countries make it a crime to sound the alarm about the dangers to the culture and to the people. In the lofty circles of those who see themselves as citizens of the world, it is considered unworthy, if not hateful, to insist on living according to your own Western values or to resist importing people who increase your chances of being killed. But if you don't have the instinct for self-preservation, it will not matter much in the long run whatever else you may have. America's great good fortune in the past has been that Americans have been able to unite as Americans against every enemy, despite our own internal differences and struggles. Black and white, Jew and Gentile, have fought and died for this country in every war. It has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength... Today, that sense of American unity is being undermined by the reckless polarization of group identity politics. That affects not only how Americans see themselves, but how others in our midst see America. Some people demand American citizenship, as if it is an entitlement, while burning the American flag and waving the flag of Mexico. And the apostles of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" watch in silence. That includes the President of the United States. Probably most people in most groups are decent. But if 85 percent of the people in Group A present no serious problems and 95 percent of the people in Group B present no serious problems, that means you can expect three times as many serious problems when you admit immigrants from Group A. Unfortunately, there is remarkably little interest in the relevant facts about crime rates, disease rates, welfare dependency or educational deficiencies among immigrants from specific countries. Most debates about immigration policies are contests in rhetoric, with hard facts being ignored as if they didn't exist. Tragically, the massacre in Orlando seems unlikely to change that. Too many people have too much invested in their own particular position to change, especially in an election year."
Democrats Push ‘Racial Equity Audits’ To Cement Control of Tech Companies - " Democrats want to subject tech companies to mandatory "racial equity audits" conducted by their political allies, a move which could cement the party's control of Silicon Valley. A small group of organizations with close ties to Democratic politicians and progressive donors conducts the majority of these audits, which advocates say are needed to promote racial justice. But in practice, equity auditors often push companies to hire more left-wing activists and former Democratic party officials, often from the auditing organizations themselves. The audits also call for the abolition of standards of "merit" and the ability for a special executive to veto any company project... Democratic officials have called for audits of major companies. One proposal from House Democrats would fine companies $20,000 a day for not completing biennial, independent "racial equity audits." In June, five Democratic senators called on Google parent company Alphabet to conduct an audit. The Democratic letter cited Color of Change, a left-wing nonprofit pushing for audits. Last week, Color of Change president Rashad Robinson was invited to testify to Congress and called for "independent auditors" to vet new products from tech companies before they’re released. Robinson did not mention that the "independent auditors" are closely affiliated with Color of Change... tech companies should be required to avoid the use of any dataset that "is the product of real-world prejudice or further perpetuates discrimination," a vague definition that could be used to shut down almost any machine-learning research."
Taxpayer-Funded ‘Diversity’ Guide Finds ‘Native Brits’ to Be “Problematic” - "The taxpayer-funded British Council, the United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities, has published a “non-discriminatory” language guide advising staffers against the use of “problematic” terms such as ‘Brits’ or ‘native English speakers’... figures of speech such as ‘British English’ and ‘Queens English’ “imply that these varieties of English are more correct or of greater importance than others.”"
The Pretext of Diversity in American Universities - "After a lecture comparing the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, I asked my students which seemed worse: tyranny or anarchy. A consensus began to gel around anarchy being preferable to tyranny, on the grounds that anarchy affords greater personal freedom and, thus, potential for improvement... But then Tamara (not her real name) raised her hand. Tamara’s classmates mostly reflected the community demographics of recent high-school graduates—that is, middle-class American teenagers of assorted race and indistinguishably suburban milieu. But Tamara herself was conspicuously Muslim. “I’m from Iraq,” she volunteered. “Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. When I was little, I heard stories about girls disappearing from school and never coming home, but it was always someone else’s school. It never happened to anyone I knew, only to my friend’s friend or my cousin’s cousin. Sometimes it was scary, but life was mostly normal. We went to church and school. We talked to our neighbors. When Saddam Hussein was removed, there was anarchy for a while. No one went to school or church. My neighbors were killing each other over clean water. Things got better eventually, even better than before. But if I had to choose between anarchy or tyranny for the rest of my life, I would choose tyranny.”... among the contributing causes of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment eras was an increase in cross-cultural exchange. While international enrollment is sometimes sought “as a bailout for universities,” the less mercenary justification for diverse matriculation is that it is of intellectual benefit to students. This is sometimes called the “diversity rationale” for demographic-sensitive recruitment and admissions in higher education... Viewpoint diversity is a liberal value lacking any necessary connection to the redistributionist instincts of political progressivism—much less the identitarian chauvinism indulged in more radical spheres... Evaluating recent public debate on affirmative action in higher education, Oliver Traldi argues that the “perspective presently dominant is not even capable of making sense of itself.” But what if “making sense” is exactly what the dominant perspective has developed to avoid? Insofar as “viewpoint diversity” affirmative action happens to benefit the same identity groups favored by reparative regimes, this can (apparently!) be written off as a happy coincidence. Appeals to other kinds of diversity are simply dismissed as unserious. Scholars like George Yancey and Jonathan Haidt took the diversity pretext at face value and generated reams of empirical evidence that conservative (and, especially, religious conservative) viewpoints are heavily under-represented in higher education. Yet, essentially no one in higher education is seriously pursuing affirmative action for conservative or Christian students or faculty, as viewpoint diversity would appear to demand. In many places, the practical meaning of student body “diversity” has become, simply, “less white and Asian.” Whether this increases viewpoint diversity in classrooms (and it might) does not appear to actually matter. What universities overwhelmingly pursue, as US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggests, is the “aesthetic” of diversity. Institutional conflation of diversity and reparations is buttressed by support from review outlets like US News & World Report, which ranks the “diversity” of student bodies by first excluding international students from consideration... This is a clear nod to the idea that diversity initiatives in higher education are not aimed at viewpoint diversity at all, but at the advancement of a particular vision of American identity politics... Equivocation between diversity and reparations is a textbook application of what Nicholas Shackel calls the “motte-and-bailey doctrine.”... A surfeit of reparations advocates (including Ta-Nehisi Coates) are openly disdainful of the diversity rationale—just not so disdainful as to actually oppose diversity initiatives. In the spirit of Ayn Rand on the dole, reparations advocates are willing to take what they can get even when it falls short of their ideals. Indeed, offices of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” appear mostly free in practice to function on the reparative rationale, so long as they don’t call it that in any FOIA-accessible documentation... the primary beneficiaries are young people from wealthy families... the reparative rationale limits the ability of admissions officers to craft a diverse student body. It demands that universities carry out an external agenda of social engineering. This is the very opposite of empowerment. Worse, the reparative rationale invites students to comprehend education as an entitlement, something society is obligated to provide them in recompense for past discrimination. This obscures the truth that higher education, liberal education, can never be passively received—only taken, wrested from the struggle to emerge from one’s Baconian cave by facing the challenging ideas of diverse, even disagreeable others. Equivocation between the diversity rationale and the reparative rationale leads to more than just confusion in public discourse. It reduces higher education from a collaborative pursuit of personal betterment, to mere political spoils."
Naturally, the problems of anarchy in post-Saddam Iraq must have been his fault
A Yale Law Student Who Refused To Apologize Over Email Explains Why: Won’t ‘Indulge This Culture Of Performative Denunciation’ - "the student, who has since come forward as Trent Colbert, invited fellow members of the Native American Law Students Association (NALSA) to a “Trap House,” a term that once referred to a crack house but that has since been appropriated by young people to mean party house. Immediately after sending the letter, students screenshotted it and sent it to an online forum for second-year law students. Some students claimed the reference to “trap house” was a term to describe a blackface party. Less than 12 hours after the email was sent, two discrimination and harassment resource coordinators from Yale Law School’s Office of Student Affairs — Ellen Cosgrove and Yaseen Eldik — scheduled a meeting with Colbert. He recorded it and later revealed the contents of the conversations to the media. The two coordinators insisted he apologize for the email to make the situation “go away” and repeatedly implied his law school career would be in jeopardy if he didn’t. They also suggested his membership with the conservative Federalist Society (a decades old legal group with members on the Supreme Court) was particularly “triggering” for students. The two even drafted an apology for him to sign and send out... Colbert refused to sign the letter, so the coordinators sent an email to the second-year law school class condemning his invite “in the strongest possible terms,” claiming his invite contained “pejorative and racist language.”... a student on the online forum said his refusal to apologize was “corny,” which, as a Native American, he could find offense by connecting that to a crop “with immense cultural significance in indigenous communities.” But, he said, would the student have to apologize simply because Colbert demanded one? He argued “no.” “Instead, an apology should be a sincere expression of remorse and admission of fault. The Yale administrators did not believe I had been racist by using the phrase ‘trap house.’ But it did not matter. They urged me to placate students via public submission,” Colbert wrote. “I don’t believe that the now-common ritual of compelled apology, complete with promises to ‘grow’ and ‘do better’ (their words, but ones I’m sure you’ve seen many times before) helps anyone, or is even intended to. If we continue to indulge this culture of performative denunciation, the very idea of an apology will lose its meaning.”"
Yale Law’s Diversity Bureaucrats Made Five Mistakes - The Atlantic - "Have you ever wondered what deans of diversity do behind closed doors? Until last week, the public had little visibility into their methods. Then covertly recorded audio emerged of Yaseen Eldik, Yale Law School’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and Ellen Cosgrove, an associate dean, pressuring a student to issue a written apology for emailing out a party invitation that offended some of his classmates... A dispute over a party invitation—even an arguably offensive one—may sound more like a matter for a high-school vice principal than one for Ivy League deans. Nevertheless, the diversity administrators spent many hours on this low-stakes drama among high-IQ adults, affording outsiders an unusual peek at their methods and a related series of crucial mistakes, most stemming from an inability or unwillingness to see how the interests of students diverge from the interests and incentives of their office. Irrespective of whether the invitation was racially offensive, the behavior of Yale Law’s diversity bureaucrats was unethical, discreditable, and clearly incompatible with key values that the elite law school purports to uphold. Similar diversity offices are now operating at institutions around the country, but their inner workings remain mysterious to many faculty members and students. The Yale Law controversy raises the underexamined question of what it actually means for diversity offices to ethically fulfill their mission, and whether choices made behind closed doors would retain support if exposed to sunlight... Colbert related his confusion to Yale’s diversity officials when they met––and they purported to believe his claim that he was ignorant of any racial connotations. Still, they went on to repeatedly pressure Colbert to apologize for the email, which they referred to as “triggering,” even though no evidence suggests that anyone experienced a bout of PTSD. As Aaron Sibarium of The Washington Free Beacon reported when he broke the story, the administrators also told Colbert that both his ideological affiliation and his race were affecting the amount of scrutiny he was getting—more scrutiny because he belongs to a conservative organization, less because he is not white... Skeptics questioned the veracity of the Free Beacon’s reporting. But the publication posted corroborating audio... Republican Senator Tom Cotton called the incident “insanity,” while the progressive Slate writer Mark Joseph Stern lamented that Yale’s approach was wrong on the merits and “folly,” as “it provides grist for the grievance-industrial complex that drives the conservative legal movement.” In The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus objected to “a grievance culture in which every slight, real or perceived, is greeted with outsize demands for disciplinary consequences.” Not everyone was so critical. After listening to the audio, the Yale Law professor Monica C. Bell wrote on Twitter that a mostly white group of commentators had put themselves in “the odd position of dictating to Black students what they should find offensive.” She also noted that, especially on racial matters, the public conversation about what counts as outrageous changes over time, and “people like those commentators, or even myself, might not be the right ones to sit from on high and drive it.”... Yale diversity officials made five major errors:
1. They failed to share important context with the community.
2. The diversity officers exploited the complexity of Yale’s rules and procedures to pressure Colbert.
3. Yale diversity officials acted like a crisis-PR team...
Yale's diversity administrators composed a draft apology for Colbert, apparently preferring the PR value of a quick letter of contrition over the educational benefits of letting a student reflect and write to his peers in his own words. What kind of educators interject themselves as ghostwriters for students?... if he had put out their statement as if he had written it himself, he arguably would have been violating Yale Law’s code of conduct. One wonders if bygone apologies at Yale were actually drafted by diversity officers.
4. The officials failed to acknowledge their own conflicts of interest...
As the USC Marshall School of Business scholar Peter Kim once explained to me, if a transgression is seen as intentional––as was true in Colbert’s case––“an apology can be quite harmful.” Rather than finding an apology appropriate, it is typically seen in these circumstances as confirmation of the belief that someone has done wrong and has character flaws
5. The university failed to safeguard student expression."
SJWs have no charity, so they see all transgressions as intentional and so apologising to them is harmful