Is diversity a good thing?

Ed Board’s Tuesday’s editorial concerning diversityalluded to a Student Senate candidate’s diversityself-billing which provided no explanation about what said diverseelement benefits our school or why diversity is necessary.

The candidate’s pledge to increase diversity on campus hasaroused within me a rather simple, yet compelling question: Why isdiversity a good thing?

Let me explain exactly what I mean by this question:

In today’s society, the mere quality of “beingdiverse” is enough to recommend something as a positive; thefact that it is different suffices.

I’m afraid that I must disagree with this view. Even more,I put forth the proposition that diversity for diversity’ssake is a misguided and dangerous effort.

Ed Board was right in saying that diversity entails more thanjust race.

Diversity is also a matter of (this list is by no meansdefinitive) different experiences, moral and religious beliefs,socio-economic backgrounds, languages and nationalities, tastes inmusic and art.

Diversity can be something as mundane as various majors.

Even if you are disagreeing with someone whom you view asclose-minded, it’s an exercise in diversity, but the blindacceptance of diversity as positive troubles me.

Diversity is a cultural buzzword, devoid of any substance tomatch its lofty ideals. Differing viewpoints can enlighten us,bringing about a change in opinion, showing us something new,strengthening our skills as analytical thinkers, and strengtheningour convictions by providing different viewpoints that corroborateour existing beliefs.

However, there is no guarantee that diversity will do any ofthese things.

For instance, people hold diverse opinions on the Holocaust.

Many consider it one of, if not the most, horrific and tragicevents in human history. While others declare that the tragedy ofthe Holocaust is that it never reached fruition. Some peoplemaintain that it never happened; that it is some sort ofconspiracy.

These opinions are diverse, but the latter two lend nothingpositive to our understanding of the episode.

Likewise, there are a number of ways to build a building or abridge, but only a narrow section of potential methods ofconstruction will result in a viable structure.

The others will ultimately lead to catastrophe.

Apply these examples to the world of ideas, and the implicationsshould be immediately clear: an idea or a background that hasnothing to recommend itself to us, save the mere fact ofdifference, deserves close scrutiny, and quite possibly, roughtreatment in an intellectual sense.

I would simply like to encourage all of you to criticallyexamine the modern doctrine of diversity to see what about it isgood and worthwhile.

The next time that someone uses diversity in and of itself as arecommendation, ask, “Why?”