SETH MICHAEL MEYER
Staff Columnist
As globalization has taken root in the fabric of the United States so, too, has the emphasis for diversity.
This modern paradigm has brought about laws requiring female representation on boards and committees and to affirmative action in higher-ed which has done a magnificent job of raising representation of minority groups. For example, black proportional representation in higher education has steadily increased from 10 percent in 1976 to 14 percent in 2015.
That number might seem small but it is actually two percent higher than the proportion of black Americans that make up the U.S. population, a number hovering around 12.3 percent (Census Bureau).
A great amount of research has come out in favor of diversity for reasons that can be summed up by Aaron Thompson, professor of sociology at Eastern Kentucky University:
“Diversity . . . expands worldliness . . . enhances social development . . . prepares students for future career success . . . prepares students to work in a global society . . . [and] increases our knowledge base,” to list a few reasons. With little effort you can find these inferences to be evident.
Certainly, then universities have taken to bringing in students from across the world to make their campuses a well-developed place of learning. What I find to be omitted in the discussion and proliferation of diversity is not that of the skin, the sex, or the sexual orientation but the diversity of thought.
Diversity of thought, or intellectual diversity, is the organization of people who have different and sometimes conflicting ideas and views of the world. Intellectual diversity is the mix of atheists and the devout, the progressives and the conservatives, the experts and the layman.
“Now why on earth would we want to cram people of conflicting beliefs into a campus,” you could ask, “That seems like nothing more than intellectual warfare, bound to happen.” Yes — exactly.
What we’re missing from the benefits of diversity is the ability to think more critically and that is lost when universities choose to not incorporate the diversity of thought. Put simply, when someone contends your beliefs, you struggle to affirm those beliefs (using facts and reason) and you should struggle because out of that struggle comes further clarity of your argument, or at least a closer proximity to the truth.
We see this type of critical thinking in empirical sciences: when a theory is debunked by a competing researcher, a better theory is created and all parties involved come closer to the truth. This new truth then benefits the world by expanding the plane of all that is known.
If criticizing one’s beliefs in empirical science is appropriate, I argue the same for matters of society. Take the recent push towards a socialized healthcare system for example: you may agree with this effort but without anyone to challenge your beliefs, your argument is lazy and ill-refined and your reasoning might as well be “because it’s better.” Criticizing theories is imperative to the learning process and it’s lacking in higher education.
Colleges aren’t missing out on this opportunity for developed critical thinking on accident. In fact, universities across the countries have been adopting things such as speech codes, which limit debate with guidelines to what can and cannot be discussed with threat of administrative punishment, along with “free speech zones” (yes designated areas for those wishing to practice their first amendment rights) and less formal practices of interrupting speakers and rallying against professors with differing opinions.
In September of last year, a $600,000 bill for security was accumulated when conservative speaker and author Ben Shapiro went to speak at the University of California, Berkeley. Nine arrests were made and crowds of over 1,000 people gathered to disrupt the speaker who presents a seemingly unpopular opinion.
An example such as the above-mentioned may be an extreme situation but the premise of discouraging the views of anything other than that of the majority is the same. The collectivist community we find in universities opposes the beneficial cognitive dissonance we get from diversified thought. They only seek confirmation in their beliefs without the discomfort of being challenged.
University is not the place to be comfortable; it’s quite opposite in fact. Students should be immersed in discomfort and their beliefs should be shaken at the core. Only then can students challenge themselves to affirm their beliefs through critical thought or have their perspective changed. Whichever the case, this emphasis on intellectual diversity and critical thought, like the empirical sciences, is the course to finding truth.