Thread by @JoshuaSealy

THREAD: I’ve seen this anti-diversity piece floating around (wsj.com/articles/the-d…), and it warrants careful critique.

TL;DR: Kronman’s diversity critique artificially severs identity and experience, strawmans diversity, relies on flawed notions of merit, and overlooks optics.

First, we can’t discuss “diversity” until we define it. Kronman notes two types of academic diversity: (1) having a range of beliefs, values, and experiences on campus; and (2) having a range of races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations on campus.

Let’s call diversity #1 (beliefs, values and experiences) “experience diversity” and diversity #2 (race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) “identity diversity”. Kronman’s thesis is simple: experience diversity is good, and identity diversity is bad.

Specifically, Kronman calls experience diversity “essential to the spirit of inquiry and debate that lies at the heart of academic life.” In contrast, he calls identity diversity “a political campaign masquerading as an educational ideal.” He’s wrong for four reasons.

Reason 1 - Artitifial Dichotomy: Kronman severs identity from experience, but they are mutually informing. Of course, every *black person* doesn’t live an identical life. But *black people* tend to have similar experiences. Diverse experience, thus, favours diverse identity.

E.g. A sex assault class without women (the most frequent victim), racialized students (the most frequent accused) or any kinky people (who are often erased in certain discourses), will have a weaker discussion, precisely due to the more homogenous experiences likely represented.

This is commonly reflected in academic settings. People from different groups are not guaranteed representatives, but they often are. Women often speak up on sexual assault; Racialized students often speak up on mass incarceration; Christians often speak up on religious liberty.

For example, during my LL.M. @ColumbiaLaw, Federalist Society events were attended by majority white students, @GenderSexLaw events by LGBTQ students, and reparations speakers by racialized students—Identity can’t be entirely severed from the diverse “beliefs” Kronman values.

The interplay of identity and experience is what informs, for example, demographic trends in support for Trump (white men support him more, and Black women support him less). So, if Kronman truly supports diverse thought, he can’t reject diverse identity—they’re proxies.

The identity/experience overlap also responds to Kronman’s artificial divide between “politics” and “academics”. In his view, politics is about feelings, and academics is about arguments. But when how you *feel* influences how you *think*, this tidy dichotomy can’t be sustained.

I’m not calling for absolute deference to how minorities feel. Rather, I’m noting how what “rational” arguments persuade us is ultimately informed by how we feel about those arguments—pure rational inquiry, devoid of emotion/experience, is, thus, an intellectual fiction.

Further, some experiences really are identity-limited. White men can’t really feel the sting of a racial slur and cisgender folks can’t really experience transphobia. If we truly value optimizing experience diversity, certain identities simply have to be part of the conversation.

Reason 2 - Strawman: Kronman rejects a strawman of diversity he sets aflame. In his view, diversity proponents *equate* “diversity of ideas with diversity of race, ethnicity, and sexual preference.” But this is a crude oversimplification.

As stated above, diversity supporters don’t equate identity and ideology. For example, in America, Candace Owens (a Black woman) supports regressive race and gender policies. And in Canada, Justice Paciocco (a white man) is a leading progressive jurist.

Rather, diversity supporters simply recognize that, on a structural level, greater identity diversity tends to promote experience diversity, i.e., not that any single *diverse individual* will hold diverse experiences or values, but rather, that *diverse communities* tend to.

Viewed this way, Kronman’s critique of diversity is a strawman. No sophisticated diversity supporter considers ideological divergence to be a form of identity disloyalty, precisely because identity diversity is a *structural*, not *individual*, asset to an intellectual community.

Kronman’s views on privilege, likewise, are a strawman. Sophisticated privilege discourse isn’t about absolute deference to any position held by a minority (we’re not monolithic); rather, it’s about mindfulness of how our experience informs our beliefs—something Kronman concedes.

Thus, thoughtful examination of privilege does not undermine “rational inquiry”, it nourishes it. A bunch of straight men speculating about sex assault, when they have never experienced the fear of being overpowered by an intimate partner, is not the height of critical inquiry.

With this in mind, weighing privilege in the broad array of our intellectual considerations doesn’t mask the supposedly objective “truth” Kronman fetishizes. Instead, it brings us closer to truth, precisely by mobilizing the diverse experiences Kronman purports to value.

Similarly, sensitivity to how marginalized groups are excluded by certain pedagogies strengthens, not weakens, intellectual inquiry. Kronman claims to want absolute “free exchange”. But if unqualified freedom creates structural barriers, it frees some, while shackling others.

Kronman would, I suspect, support penalizing a professor who calls his Black students the N-word. Scrutinizing classroom discussion and syllabi for inclusion is simply another modality in which classroom spaces can compromise substantively (rather than formally) open discourse.

Put differently, Kronman doesn’t actually support totally “free exchange”. He simply lacks sensitivity to the complex and subtle ways exclusion can manifest—A sensitivity he is at increased risk of lacking, in part, due to his identity #meta

Reason 3 - Merit: Kronman thinks diversity compromises “excellence”. But how does he measure excellence? Ultimately, admissions policies that lack identity-consciousness run the risk of structurally favouring certain groups, to the detriment of the experience diversity he values.

Reason 4 - Optics: All the above aside, universities are gateways to power (politics, the judiciary, etc). So, even if white men were the most meritorious (lol), there’s an optical cost when those men monopolize positions of power, limiting the aspirations of marginalized groups.

In sum, the experience diversity Kronman supports is furthered by identity diversity, not undermined. And absent a superior proxy for experience diversity (he provides none), his critique is nothing more than an unsophisticated account of exclusion in academic settings.