The Perils of 'Diversity' Hiring

Here is a subject with which I am intimately acquainted. Jennifer Delton in the Chronicle of Higher Education, writes "Why Diversity for Diversity's Sake Won't Work"

The goal of diversifying college faculties may be a worthy one, but academic circles have largely ignored problems inherent in the practice of "diversity hiring." Such hiring practices are not only legally questionable, but they also go against everything a half-century of antiracist educational activism has taught us about the meaninglessness of visible racial characteristics. Despite diversity advocates' insistence that color matters, the meaninglessness of physical racial characteristics continues to be a key theme of antiracist education. Moreover, that presumption — the meaninglessness of racial characteristics — underlies current antidiscrimination laws as well as the rules of social etiquette. To infer anything about a person's interests, character, or sensibility on the basis of physical racial characteristics is legally suspect and socially déclassé. Yet that is what "diversity hiring" practices require us to do.

Try pursuing a career in academia, especially in a field like economics that is already overcrowded. If you are a white man, like me, the diversity/multicultural zealots will make it clear that you are not welcome.