harmonicminer

Daniel Foster writes to express his disappointment in some responses to a New York Times editorial about the plight of poor, Christian whites when it comes to current diversity policies at many universities and colleges:

I’m disappointed by both Tim Fernholz‘s and Adam Serwer‘s takes on Ross Douthat’s column yesterday. Responding to empirical evidence that poor, white Christians are among the least well-represented “minority” groups at elite colleges, they both more or less default to saying ‘yeah, well, it sucks to be poor.’

Except Douthat’s point is that, when it comes to elite college admissions, it sucks more to be poor and white than it does to be poor and black, and a fortiori, that poor blacks’ chances improve as they get poorer, while just the opposite is the case for whites. Either Serwer and Fernholz are okay with this or they aren’t. But they won’t say, leaving us to assume that they view it as acceptable collateral damage in the battle for diversity.

They also dismiss as so much whining the feelings of alienation from “elite” culture felt by poor, working class whites — at their peril and ours.

Later, Foster points out how often African and Caribbean elites are admitted under “diversity” policies, as if they are those who were harmed by American racism in the past, and should now be favored under affirmative action quotas by another name (“diversity”).

There is much more at the links above, and the Douthat column is worth reading completely.

His final paragraph:

If universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there’s more to diversity than skin color — and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more R.O.T.C. cadets, and a few more aspiring farmers.

Well, yes.  But as many have pointed out, and as we’ve linked and written extensively on this blog, “diversity” as a word in the university lexicon has a meaning unrelated to its normal meaning.  It is not about seeing that the university represents a microcosm of all the cultural elements of society represented proportionally in the university’s faculty, policies and student body.  Rather, it is an unvarnished mouthpiece for the Left, a way to do affirmative action quotas by another name (since the public does not like the idea of quotas), a way to slide most of the Leftist agenda into most aspects of campus life under the guise of being “open” and “accepting” of others…..  except, of course, white evangelical Christians, especially poor ones, and conservatives of any stripe.

If “diversity” meant “representation proportional to society,” at least half of university faculty hires would be conservatives.  Of course, it does not mean that, not even in Christian universities.

I wish the experience reported in this article was unique, but it is not.  I seem to have it, as a professor, about once per year.  Sometimes twice.

Incredibly, the Claremont School of Theology is getting ready to expand its offerings, just a tiny, wee bit:

In a bow to the growing diversity of America’s religious landscape, the Claremont School of Theology, a Christian institution with long ties to the Methodist Church, will add clerical training for Muslims and Jews to its curriculum this fall, to become, in a sense, the first truly multi-faith American seminary.

The transition, which is being formally announced Wednesday, upends centuries of tradition in which seminaries have hewn not just to single faiths but often to single denominations within those faiths. Eventually, Claremont hopes to add clerical programs for Buddhists and Hindus.

Although there are other theological institutions that accept students of multiple faiths, or have partnerships with institutions of other religions, Claremont is believed to be the first accredited institution that will train students of multiple faiths for careers as clerics. The 275-student seminary offers master’s and doctoral degrees.

“It’s really kind of a creative, bold move,” said David Roozen, director of the Institute for Religion Research at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut. “It kind of fits, to some extent, California…. I think there will be a lot of us who will be watching that experiment.”

Claremont’s administration sees the multi-faith expansion as the wave of the future in American theological training. But it is straining relations between the school and more conservative elements of the United Methodist Church, which this year was expected to provide about 8% of Claremont’s $10-million budget. The church suspended its support for the school earlier this year pending an investigation.

I’m not sure just what is meant by the phrase, “the more conservative elements of the United Methodist Church.”  Would that mean the people who think Jesus was actually the Messiah, the eternal Son of God, who was born to the virgin Mary, died on the cross, and was bodily resurrected by the Father on the third day?  Whose sacrifice is the means for our forgiveness, who atoned for our sins by the crucifixion, who demonstrated the He alone has the power of eternal life, as demonstrated in the resurrection?

I suppose that these days only “conservatives” believe these things.  For all the rest, who think the “narrative” is what matters, that the “metaphor” of the resurrection is meant to apply in some analogical way to human life and society, nothing much is true enough to fight for.  Why shouldn’t Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc., get their innings?  After all, don’t they have a narrative, too?  Don’t they have some of God’s truth?  What are we worried about, anyway, if all truth is God’s truth?

In the meantime, I think it’s a safe bet that John Wesley, founder of Methodism in the 18th century, would be beyond appalled.  I can’t help but wonder what (few?) remaining United Methodists who believe in orthodox Christian teachings are thinking about this.  I would guess the response of the United Methodist Church to this decision is going to tell the tale.   I am not very optimistic about it, given its recent history.  Essentially, if the UMC doesn’t rise up as a body and resoundingly reject this out of hand, they should just give up, and change their name to Social Justice, Incorporated, or maybe United for Leftist Politicians (ULP).  Or they could just join the Unitarians, who don’t believe in Jesus either.

In the mad dash to be a better exemplar of “diversity” than the other guy, look for other (especially denominationally untethered) seminaries to follow Claremont’s lead.  One can only wonder where they’ll draw the line.  Why not mix in a little Hopi Indian tradition, some voodoo, and a dash of Shintoism?  And these multicultural days, what about Zoroastrianism, or, for that matter, cannibalistic fertility cults of the south Pacific, or African tribal rites?  Who is to say where some slice of God’s truth may not be found?

When Claremont starts building Aztec pyramids in the parking lot on Foothill Avenue, I’m going to begin sticking to the 210 freeway whenever I drive through the area (well…  if the freeway sniper doesn’t make a reappearance, anyway).  I don’t think I would be an acceptable sacrifice to appease the Sun God (who, to the surprise of the eco-pagan Cult of Gore, seems to be unusually quiescent this year), but I don’t want to find out the hard way.  Hey…  maybe the new religion of eco-pagan EarthWorship could get a department at Claremont, too!  Oh, I forgot….  they already have one at most universities.  They just need to move it into the School of Theology, where it belongs.  So maybe Claremont will be ahead of the game.

When this whole Aztec-sacrifice-in-the-parking-lot thing really gets up in high gear, it’s going to do a number on the restaurant trade in the city of Claremont.  Talk about eating meat sacrificed to idols….

Glenn Reynolds: Higher education’s bubble is about to burst

It’s a story of an industry that may sound familiar.

The buyers think what they’re buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.

Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they’re buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn’t.

Yes, this sounds like the housing bubble, but I’m afraid it’s also sounding a lot like a still-inflating higher education bubble. And despite (or because of) the fact that my day job involves higher education, I think it’s better for us to face up to what’s going on before the bubble bursts messily.

College has gotten a lot more expensive. A recent Money magazine report notes: “After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439 percent since 1982. … Normal supply and demand can’t begin to explain cost increases of this magnitude.”

Consumers would balk, except for two things.

First — as with the housing bubble — cheap and readily available credit has let people borrow to finance education. They’re willing to do so because of (1) consumer ignorance, as students (and, often, their parents) don’t fully grasp just how harsh the impact of student loan payments will be after graduation; and (2) a belief that, whatever the cost, a college education is a necessary ticket to future prosperity.

Bubbles burst when there are no longer enough excessively optimistic and ignorant folks to fuel them. And there are signs that this is beginning to happen already.

A New York Times profile last week described Courtney Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University with nearly $100,000 in student loan debt — debt that her degree in Religious and Women’s Studies did not equip her to repay. Payments on the debt are about $700 per month, equivalent to a respectable house payment, and a major bite on her monthly income of $2,300 as a photographer’s assistant earning an hourly wage.

And, unlike a bad mortgage on an underwater house, Munna can’t simply walk away from her student loans, which cannot be expunged in a bankruptcy. She’s stuck in a financial trap.

Some might say that she deserves it — who borrows $100,000 to finance a degree in women’s and religious studies that won’t make you any money? She should have wised up, and others should learn from her mistake, instead of learning too late, as she did: “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life slaving away to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back.”

But bubbles burst when people catch on, and there’s some evidence that people are beginning to catch on. Student loan demand, according to a recent report in the Washington Post, is going soft, and students are expressing a willingness to go to a cheaper school rather than run up debt. Things haven’t collapsed yet, but they’re looking shakier — kind of like the housing market looked in 2007.

So what happens if the bubble collapses? Will it be a tragedy, with millions of Americans losing their path to higher-paying jobs?

Maybe not. College is often described as a path to prosperity, but is it? A college education can help people make more money in three different ways.

First, it may actually make them more economically productive by teaching them skills valued in the workplace: Computer programming, nursing or engineering, say. (Religious and women’s studies, not so much.)

Second, it may provide a credential that employers want, not because it represents actual skills, but because it’s a weeding tool that doesn’t produce civil-rights suits as, say, IQ tests might. A four-year college degree, even if its holder acquired no actual skills, at least indicates some ability to show up on time and perform as instructed.

And, third, a college degree — at least an elite one — may hook its holder up with a useful social network that can provide jobs and opportunities in the future. (This is more true if it’s a degree from Yale than if it’s one from Eastern Kentucky, but it’s true everywhere to some degree).

While an individual might rationally pursue all three of these, only the first one — actual added skills — produces a net benefit for society. The other two are just distributional — about who gets the goodies, not about making more of them.

Yet today’s college education system seems to be in the business of selling parts two and three to a much greater degree than part one, along with selling the even-harder-to-quantify “college experience,” which as often as not boils down to four (or more) years of partying.

Post-bubble, perhaps students — and employers, not to mention parents and lenders — will focus instead on education that fosters economic value. And that is likely to press colleges to focus more on providing useful majors. (That doesn’t necessarily rule out traditional liberal-arts majors, so long as they are rigorous and require a real general education, rather than trendy and easy subjects, but the key word here is “rigorous.”)

My question is whether traditional academic institutions will be able to keep up with the times, or whether — as Anya Kamenetz suggests in her new book, “DIY U” — the real pioneering will be in online education and the work of “edupunks” who are more interested in finding new ways of teaching and learning than in protecting existing interests.

I’m betting on the latter. Industries seldom reform themselves, and real competition usually comes from the outside. Keep your eyes open — and, if you’re planning on applying to college, watch out for those student loans.

This is a crosspost with MusicalGod.

African American Advancing the Culture of Life

Dr. Johnny Hunter, founder of Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN). He and his wife Pat Hunter are pioneers in the pro-life movement and provide instrumental leadership, coalition building, networking and research for the Movement.

Elder Dr. Levon Yuille, National Director of the National Black Pro-Life Congress, and pastor of The Bible Church, Ypsilanti, MI A pioneer in the pro-life movement and the most visionary speaker in the nation today. Highly anointed.

Rev. Dr. Clenard Childress, Founder & Director of LEARN Northeast, Assistant National Director of LEARN, Inc. and pastor of New Calvary Baptist Deliverance, Montclair, NJ -The prophetic voice in the pro-life movement who is used by God from coast to coast.

Stephen Broden, Pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship, Dallas, TX. Chief strategist of the black pro-life movement. Appeared on TV and challenges the argument of moral equivalence used as excuse by some clergy to avoid confronting womb-lynching.

Day Gardner, founder of National Black Pro-Life Union. Day is a news anchor woman, commentator, columnist and researcher on issues impacting marriage, life, family, education and community.

Bill and Deborah Owens, founders of Coalition of American Pastors and Education for All. Bill and Deborah are seasoned educators and policy makers who provide significant solutions for educational issues of the day.

Dr. Alveda King, Founder of King for America, and an associate of Priest for Life, Atlanta, GA Her father was Dr. MLK’s brother and she walks in the legacy of the true leaders of the civil rights movement.

Jenny Hodges, President of Pro-Life Unity – literally a vanilla chocolate sister who is determined to recruit Georgia state legislators to support life agenda.

Dean Nelson, Director of NPAC – Network of Politically Active Christians, Washington, DC. Keeps organizations informed of national legislation which affects life, family and the church.

Walter Hoye, a minister in Oakland, California, hauled into court and convicted for holding a sign offering help to pregnant moms going into a “clinic” to get an abortion.

Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder of BOND, Brotherhood of a New Destiny, Appeared on national TV networks when he boldly intervened in the Los Angeles riots. Has boldly challenged other national leaders including Jesse Jackson to return to the pro-life position.

Star Parker, Founder of CURE, Coalition of Urban Renewal and Education, author of Uncle Sam’s Plantation and syndicated columnist. Previously based in Los Angeles, now in Washington, DC uses her testimony to bring black women from making a bad choice and encouraging people to escape the bonds of the welfare state. Expertise includes knowledge of public policy.

Arnold Culbreath, Director of Protecting Black Life, Brought attention to and helped individual cases of injustices while working to get more pastors involved. Excellent musician on the saxophone, too.

Dr. Ron Myers, MD, Founder of the National Juneteenth Festival Memorial service. “Maafa” is a Swahili word which refers to the black holocaust which includes the middle passage, the plantation beatings, lynching, gang violence. He calls abortion the present day maafa!

Dr. Haywood Robinson, MD, and/or his wife Dr. Noreen Johnson, MD, medical doctors who took a strong <stand> for life after Christ came into their lives.

Dr. John Diggs, MD, a medical doctor who developed much of the abstinence material you see. Testified in formal state legislative committee hearings. Addresses abstinence and other issues from biblical and medical viewpoints.

Sylinthia Stewart, NC LEARN Office Administrator and a confidential counselor for post abortion healing ministry.

Catherine Davis, Director of African American Outreach for Georgia Right to Life. Post Abortive civil rights advocate speaks to general and youth audiences.

Angela Stanton – mother, author, motivational speaker. Author of Life Beyond These Walls. Ministers on life after abuse, prison and other life issues.

Sonya Howard – author, post abortive motivational speaker.

Richard Lane – Catholic Evangelist, founder of Qorban Ministries whose mission is to” REVIVE your Parish and YOUR FAITH by bringing back the power and courage of the HOLY SPIRIT!”

There are many African-American Christians who are very strongly pro-life.  I would invite ANY church or Çhristian institution to consider having one or more of these people as speakers and workshop leaders. 

Another shot at understanding integration of psychology and christianity

Over the 40 plus years of our profession’s existence, Christian counselors have tried in numerous ways to model the relationship between Christianity/theology/bible and the study of psychology. Unfortunately, many model building efforts created more barriers than dialogue among brothers and sisters. Counselors staked out territory with titles such as biblical counseling, integration, levels of explanation.

However, in recent years, more authors have tried hard to articulate a distinctly Christian view of persons and a humble articulation of the change process that builds on the good insights of others (e.g., McMinn & Campbell’s Integrative psychotherapy, Johnson’s Foundations of Soul Care, Malony & Augsburger’s Christian Counseling, etc.). These authors have taken the time to examine their control beliefs, theological assumptions, and more in order to make their psychology truly Christian and not merely a rehash of secular ideas.

This looks interesting.

Hmmm…

The High Cost of College and What it Does to Your Children

Each fall, nearly two million American students will leave for college for the very first time. Their education will cost $12,000 a year for a public university and up to $50,000 for a private one. Scholarships and grants reduce the cost for most families, but still, the Wall Street Journal reports that the average student leaves college with $23,186 in debt.

Nationwide, the total cost for this transaction is somewhere between 25 and 40 billion dollars per year.

At least families are getting their money’s worth.

Or not.

A recent study confirms what many parents have long suspected: going to college can make kids forget what’s important and embrace values that are counter to what they learned growing up.

Before I share this study’s results, let me say this to parents: leftist professors don’t feel sorry for you. As far as they’re concerned, you’ve been oppressing the masses to get that money anyway, so it’s deliciously ironic that you not only turn your children over to the indoctrinators, but that you fork over 50k to 200k and for the privilege of doing so.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what the late Richard Rorty, one of the most prominent philosophers of the 20th century, said on the subject:

“I, like most Americans who teach humanities or social science in colleges and universities … try to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own … The fundamentalist parents of our fundamentalist students think that the entire ‘American liberal establishment’ is engaged in a conspiracy. The parents have a point … [W]e are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours … I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft [domination] of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents …”[1] [editor’s note: sorry for all the ellipses, but it’s hard to summarize Rorty’s windblown rhetoric].

When it comes to reshaping values, liberal universities know precisely what they’re doing. And the reality is that about four out of five students walk away from their Christian faith by the time they are in their twenties.[2]

The Indoctrination Plan:

What your child won’t learn at college: a sense of citizenship. In February, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute released its annual report entitled, “The Shaping of the American Mind.” ISI researchers studied students’ knowledge of basic citizenship questions, along with 39 issue-based propositions and found that college graduates are dangerously ignorant of basic civics.

For example, fewer than one in two college graduates know that the phrase “We hold these truths to be self evident…” is from the Declaration of Independence (10% actually think it is from the Communist Manifesto).

What your child will learn at college: liberal radicalism. According to ISI, college graduates are significantly MORE likely to believe in abortion on demand and same sex marriage, and significantly LESS likely to believe that the Bible is the word of God, that prayer should be allowed in schools, and that anyone can succeed in America with hard work and perseverance.

The other kind of IED (intermittent explosive disorder)
Much more at the link.

The New York Times says that a faculty member at the University of Alabama killed 3 and wounded 6 others after being denied tenure at the biology department. Circumstantial evidence suggested that she was upset at what she believed was unfair treatment. The suspect apparently “had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure”, and the NYT quoted one source as saying “she began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair.”

I’ve been to some tense faculty meetings. Meetings with outcomes that had the potential to really change people’s lives who were involved, in one way or another.

So far I haven’t had to duck and cover because somebody started shooting.  But it is starting to seem that the only people who respect the “gun-free zones” on campus are the victims.

Maybe I should start ordering my hoodies to be Kevlar-lined.

Just in case a deranged post-modern prof who gives feminist readings to medieval French poetry happens to go postal.

The previous post in this series is here.

This post is less about the Left AT Christian Universities than it is about the pressures of the Left ON Christian Universities, although the latter is mostly made possible by the presence of the former.  That is, the Left outside of Christian Universities will only be able to pressure them into making concessions with the help of Leftists inside those institutions who encourage leaders to succumb to the pressure.

Blacklisting a Christian University Much more at the link.

According to the Langley Advance, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), the Canadian version of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), has issued a report stating that Christian universities fail to provide faculty members with academic freedom. Specifically the report places Trinity Western University in British Columbia on its list of universities and colleges that have a faith or ideological test as a condition of employment.

There are also professional academic organizations in the USA that are considering taking the position that universities may not require any particular beliefs or lifestyle commitments on the part of employees or job applicants.   This is especially humorous since there are all kinds of “unofficial litmus tests” that virtually any faculty member must accept in order to be hired in the modern university.   Those tests are defended with positively religious fervor, though they are not religious in nature.  Far from it.

Try to get in a job in a university these days if you say in the job interview that you don’t think “diversity” should be a higher value for the university than simply getting the most competent faculty and best prepared students it can get.

It would be wise not to volunteer in the job interview that you think anthropogenic global warming is an enormous scam.

If you happen to think that the Iraq war was a proper use of American military power, it would be wise not to say so until you have tenure.

Do you think that God created human beings in a special act of creation (whether you are an “old earth” creationist, a “young earth” creationist, an “intelligent design” proponent, etc.)?  Just don’t bring it up, and sidestep any questions that may touch on it.

Do you think Sarah Palin would have been better for the USA than Barrack Obama?  Unless you desire to be laughed at as you exit your unsuccessful job interview, don’t let on.

Do you think economic growth and the spread of capitalism is a better aid program for the third world than permanent entitlements in the form of foreign aid?  Better not say so.

Do you think that God’s Word in scripture means pretty much what it says, and that historical understandings of its theological and moral content are correct?  Learn to beat the quasi-polygraph on this one, since, obviously, only bigots and haters believe this.

There are pieties to which all must make obeisance in the world of academia, and they are pretty much the exact reverse of the positions just stated.  Sadly, these same pieties may be defended by all too many in Christian universities as well, and defended more vigorously, at times, than the bedrock commitments one would have thought more central to their mission.

The only question remaining is if Christian universities are going to capitulate to the very real pressures that come along with seeking respectability in the eyes of the secular academic world.   When Christian universities do succumb, it isn’t really the pressures from outside that make it happen….  it’s the pressure from inside.

The scary thing is that those applying that pressure will be quoting scripture as they do it.

The next post in this series is here.

Here is a post that began as a facebook discussion with my friend Kirsten…  and since I can’t bear to type anything and only use it once, read on.  Warning:  in this discussion, the labels “liberal” and “conservative” must be understood historically.  Modern “conservatives” believe about the same things as 18th- and 19th-century “liberals.”  Modern “liberals” are often somewhere on the spectrum between late 19th-century “progressives” and 19th-century “socialists.”  In the 18th century, “conservatives” were those who wanted to maintain the governing status quo involving royalty, aristocratic privilege, and the like, bearing no resemblance to modern “conservatives.”  So watch your head, or you might bump on on a low hanging ideological pipe.

In a lengthy article that purports to report on sociological research into the indeological predispositions of university faculty and people’s reactions to them, we are reminded that Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left. (Much more at the link.)

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.

A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is greatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal. Even though that may be an outdated stereotype, it influences younger people’s ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.

At least it’s nice that the NYTimes acknowledges that academics are mostly leftists.  Now if only they admitted the same about the mainstream media, and themselves, we’d be in a more honest place.  In any case, the conjecture here only explains (to some extent) why academia remains leftist. It doesn’t explain how it got that way, except with a pretty thin reference to reaction to the New Deal.

As is often the case with attempts at sociological explanation, the central roles of ideas and values are shunted aside in favor of demographics. Ask yourself this: without a Marx or Nietsche in the history of ideas, would the academic establishment have trended left? What if the favorite ideas of the left had not developed in the 19th century? They didn’t HAVE to develop then. They just did.

What if Dewey had not influenced the public educational establishment as he did?  What if progressive politics had not found a home in activist universities? 

Ideas have consequences. The leftist academic establishment, all the while that it derides the notion of “progress” in society, still thinks its ideas are better than the old ones that were replaced… all the while denying that there is a universal standard by which they can be judged “better”…. but nevertheless being quite confident that there really aren’t such things as right and wrong, God and Satan, etc.  Except, of course, in the case of global warming deniers, who clearly are destined for the pit of Hell.

I think the nature of the ideas explains much more than demographic “typing.”  People have always been looking for two things: ways to get power over others, and ways to maximize personal freedom for themselves.  Very, very much of the liberal left is well-described by that.

The case of sociology is especially instructive, given that from the beginning it was a social/political agenda masquerading as an academic discipline.

Virginia Tech is strongly committed to diversity.   It is not “academics honoring diversity” precisely because VTech has place diversity on the very top rung of values, below which all other values must fall, whatever protestations of academic ambition may by made.

Virginia Tech Reasserts ‘Diversity’ Folly

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University—better known as Virginia Tech—is in the midst of an extraordinary campaign to impose a comprehensive regime focusedon “diversity.” Reading through Virginia Tech’s official documents since March is something like watching a colonial power laying out a plan to force its language, culture, laws, religion, and ideals on a subject people. The put-upon natives in this case are, first of all, the faculty of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. But the imperial power, of course, doesn’t mean to stop with subordinating the faculty chiefs to the Empire. The rule of Diversity must ultimately extend to every student and every employee.

Diversity? It must surely strike most readers that the ideological campaign for diversity on campus is by this point rather old-fashioned. Diversity as a rallying cry for the campus left took its initial impulse from Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1978 case, Bakke v. The Regents of the University of California. Powell’s remarks weren’t supported by any other justice and did not have the force of law, but they nonetheless suggested a rationale for using racial preferences in college admissions. A racially diverse college classroom, in Powell’s opinion, was bound to be a more pedagogically enriching one, since it stood to reason that people of different races would learn from each other.
……………………….

We draw attention to this university once again, however, not as a case study in vapid strategizing. Rather, it serves as a bookend to the whole diversity movement. Marx’s famous remark that great events and personalities in world history repeat themselves, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce,” seems apt. Virginia Tech, a large regional university known more for its football program and a series of horrific killings, has chosen to play out a spent ideology to its final dregs. That it is does so in the delusion that it is somehow on the cutting edge of academic innovation is what makes this farce.

Farces are not without their victims. Virginia Tech is an institution of modest academic standing that seems intent on winning a certain kind of race to the bottom. Faculty members there have privately reassured us that the administrators aren’t as crazy as they sound. They are just playing the cards that they think they need to. It’s an excuse I don’t buy. The administrators have wrapped themselves in such fervent diversity rhetoric that we have to take them at their word. They may have started off as cynical players, but they are now totally invested in this folly and are surrounded with minions who are clearly true believers.

So the Virginia Tech story does seem worth yet another look. A large state university is spiraling downward into an anti-intellectual orthodoxy, and as it plummets it is busy praising its ability to take flight.

This is the beginning and ending of an article that is well worth reading in its entirety, if you want to understand the origins of the modern diversity movement.

The previous post in this series is here.

There is very little here with which to disagree, so I present in its entirety this post at BLOG and MABLOG

Carl Henry once said, “If evangelicals lose the battle for the mind of contemporary man it will be in their own colleges.” That’s the kind of prophetic and semi-inscrutable statement that we could use a lot more of, and which unfortunately, we don’t hear a very much any more. Since Henry wrote those words, the tide of the battle to which he referred has generally gone against us, and it was grim in his time. There are some hopeful signs here and there, but by and large, the Christian establishment for higher education has presented to a disintegrating world mere echoes of that disintegration, instead of a robust alternative to it. The academic fads that tear through the secular halls of learning stroll through our halls of learning. The virulent forms of unbelief that plague the postmodern mind commend themselves (always in milder forms) to us. We have come to believe that Christian counterculture consists of driving down the road to perdition at a slower rate of speed. But slow damnation is not the biblical alternative. The higher education of evangelicalism resembles the unfortunate politician that Winston Churchill once compared to a seat cushion — he always bore the impress of the last person who sat on him.

Henry again. “My guess would be that on balance the secular universities more effectively communicate humanism than many of our religious colleges succeed in communicating biblical theism.” They catechize their own more effectively than we do. They train their next generation in the tenets of their faith more rigorously than we do.

When the secular great ones assemble in their magnificent banquets, and a faithful believer comes into their hall, his presence will generally take one of two forms. Either he will attend as John the Baptist did, with his head on a platter, or he will attend as Daniel did, in order to translate the words of judgment that were written on the walls by a celestial hand. But we show up with all the confidence of a leper in a rented tux two sizes too large.

This is all very general, so let me mention a few specific areas where Christian higher education has lost its bearings and consequently its way. Our institutions (generally) do not exhibit biblical faith and fidelity on matters of: human sexuality that reflects God’s image, male and female; the doctrine of biblical creation; the meaning of history and the glory of Christendom; the serious idolatry of Enlightenment categories; the risible idolatries of postmodern rejection of Enlightenment categories; and the foundational need for Christian colleges to be free of financial entanglements with the secular state. For starters.

In short, Christian higher education no longer believes that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. Having begun with Carl Henry, let me conclude with another of his most trenchant observations.

“The intellectual decision most urgently facing humanity in our time is whether to acknowledge or disown Jesus Christ as the hope of the world and whether Christian values are to be the arbiter of human civilization in the present instead of only in the final judgment of men and nations.”

And so let me propose a little thought experiment. Suppose that glorious statement above were to be presented to the board of trustees of every Christian seminary, college and university in North America, as well as to every faculty senate, and suppose it were presented for a straight up or down vote. How would the vote go? How would the truth fare? Exactly, and therein lies our problem. And the only way out is repentance.

So, now I am prepared to answer the question posed in the title of this post, “Does the secular Left believe its faith more firmly than the Christian academy believes its own?”

The answer? It depends on what you mean by the notion of “the faith of the Christian academy.”

And therein lies the problem, since, it seems, no one is quite sure these days.  And sadly, with all of that, there seem to be all too many matters of essentially complete agreement between the Christian academy and the secular Left at secular institutions.  Those matters of agreement seem to be far more determinedly defended by Christian academics than the things that make them distinctively Christian.  We can talk about whether Jesus’ message and life were more about personal salvation or corporate lifestyle and social justice, but woe to anyone who questions the underpinnings of anyone’s secularly defined disciplinary methodology, or the theory of knowledge that underlays it.  After all, some things are just too important to trifle with.

Did Jesus rise from the dead?  It depends on what you mean by “rise from the dead.”    If Jesus rose from the dead, does that matter to us today?  It depends on what you mean by “matter.”  Or maybe “today.”  Or “us.”  Or even “Jesus.”

But in some quarters, “diversity” and multiculturalism are without doubt absolutely required perspectives, more or less without nuance, for all good Christians who are listening to the Holy Spirit.

Whatever the Holy Spirit may actually be, I mean.  And whatever you mean by “Christian.”

H/T:  Melody

The next post in this series is here.

Vicious Jew-Hatred Wins Center Stage at UC Irvine

To see a firsthand example of Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semitism, you need look no further than the University of California, Irvine.The campus’ Muslim Student Union is nationally infamous for their annual anti-Israel week (which they unsuccessfully christen “Palestine Awareness” week) and for the vitriolic anti-Semitic language of some of their speakers.

This comes as no surprise, of course. In most modern universities, disdain for Israel is more or less de rigueur. Israel is routinely compared to apartheid South Africa, deemed racist (with UN connivance, of course, at “human rights” conferences dominated by Islamist nations), and even compared to Nazi Germany.

When will anti-Semitism show up as a topic during “Justice Week” at a university near you? Probably not anytime soon, because injustices done to Jews or Israelis appear to be “stealthed,” and just don’t show up on the academic radar.

Some of have suggested that “conservative sociology” is an oxymoron.  Sociology at most universities, even ostensibly more conservative “Christian” universities, is essentially a free bully pulpit for faculty bent on “progressive” social change, meaning let’s all move Left in quick march, double-time.  That’s the norm, like it or not.  It seems that having Karl Marx as one of the founders of your discipline does have a certain effect.  Here are a few excerpts from a very interesting conversation between some “conservative sociologists” on the topic (conservative being a relative term, of course).  But compared to the run of the mill sociology prof, these folks do seem a bit more reasonable, and I recommend the whole thing for a fuller flavor:

Continue reading “Is there such a thing as conservative sociology?”