\n<\/p>\n
In my review of the new book Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It and How to Get It<\/em>, I focused on several critiques I had of the book. But I think co-editor and Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi\u2019s essay deserves further analysis.<\/p>\n For those who believe \u201cviewpoint diversity\u201d is a Trojan horse for imposing conservative values, the origins of the concept offer strong evidence. Tomasi acknowledges, \u201cThe concept of viewpoint diversity burst on the political scene in 2002 with the publication of David Horowitz\u2019s \u2018Academic Bill of Rights.\u2019\u201d According to Tomasi, \u201cHorowitz argued that universities should seek greater pluralism and diversity.\u201d <\/p>\n That\u2019s not exactly how I describe one of the first concerted national campaigns against academic freedom in the 21st century. Tomasi\u2019s admiration of Horowitz is shared in the essay by Tyler VanderWeele that begins, \u201cIn 2002, writer David Horowitz proposed an Academic Bill of Rights to ensure viewpoint diversity in US higher education\u201d (35). This reverence for one of the most notable early efforts by conservatives to suppress academic freedom is an alarming nostalgia.<\/p>\n Horowitz wrote the blueprint for today\u2019s attacks on intellectual freedom. His book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America<\/em> was imitated by the man he mentored, Charlie Kirk, for the Professor Watchlist of Turning Point USA. Horowitz\u2019s Academic Bill of Rights was devoted to passing legislation so that if professors expressed a political opinion in class, it was deemed a violation of the academic freedom of students.<\/p>\n Hearing Horowitz described uncritically as the godfather of \u201cviewpoint diversity\u201d raises alarm bells about what it means and how it is used. Horowitz explicitly argued for taking left-wing terms such as \u201cdiversity\u201d and manipulating them to attack the left. In 2003, Horowitz urged conservatives to \u201cuse the language that the left has deployed\u201d and declare that there is \u201ca lack of \u2018intellectual diversity\u2019 on college faculties.\u201d<\/p>\n We shouldn\u2019t make the ad hominem error of condemning viewpoint diversity based on the flaws of its advocates. But we also shouldn\u2019t ignore the danger that viewpoint diversity can be manipulated to suppress academic freedom in ways that its founders such as Horowitz explicitly called for.<\/p>\n If you are going to cite Horowitz as the chief inspiration for viewpoint diversity, you need to carefully show why it will not be used to pursue his censorious goals. And there is not one word of criticism against Horowitz in this book. There is nothing but praise for his vision of viewpoint diversity, which leads reasonable people to worry that viewpoint diversity is either intended to pursue Horowitz\u2019s goal of repression or it is being followed with indifference to these dangerous consequences. And that\u2019s why many critics are rightly skeptical about viewpoint diversity.<\/p>\n If viewpoint diversity can be uprooted from the poisonous soil in which it originated and replanted to bear useful fruit\u2014and I believe it can\u2014then it requires a lot of work. We need to acknowledge that Horowitz led a cynical effort to use the language of the left about diversity in order to destroy the left and firmly oppose that. We need to reject every single attempt to impose viewpoint diversity by government command. We need to ensure that viewpoint diversity is not a concept imposed on academics but instead one that they are persuaded to embrace.<\/p>\n At the core of Tomasi\u2019s essay is a rejection of the \u201cscholarly sanctification\u201d view\u2014whatever professors in a field think, that is the correct diversity of viewpoints. Tomasi is certainly aware that you cannot run a university based on \u201cpolitical representation\u201d where professors are hired to match the political views of the general public. He suggests a \u201cheterodox view\u201d as \u201ca kind of hybrid of the two dominant views\u2014the scholarly sanctification view, and the political representation view.\u201d But there is no magical viewpoint diversity beast that can be bred from these two fundamentally incompatible concepts. Every step toward political representation takes you away from scholarly merit and betrays academic standards.<\/p>\n Tomasi claims that the AAUP is the defender of the \u201cstatus quo\u201d in academia. In reality, the AAUP is a radical reformer, calling for viewpoint diversity to be protected against the efforts of politicians and administrators who often seek to purge controversial professors who represent the far extremes.<\/p>\n According to Tomasi, \u201cToday\u2019s cohort of scholarly experts remains vulnerable to the same \u2018tyranny of public opinion\u2019 and \u2018uncritical and intemperate partisanship\u2019 that the founders of the American Association of University Professors in 1915 warned academia to resist.\u201d <\/p>\n In reality, the AAUP of 1915 agreed wholeheartedly with the AAUP of today. The AAUP in 1915 was warning that scholarly experts could be overruled by partisan politicians\u2014the \u201ctyranny of public opinion\u201d\u2014and that these partisan forces would replace faculty judgments. This was not an argument by the AAUP for anticipatory obedience to abandon scholarly standards and hire based on politics out of fear that politicians might force them to do so.<\/p>\n Yes, there is always a danger of groupthink in any academic field, which is why we need academic freedom and tenure to protect viewpoint diversity. Tomasi is great at pointing out how \u201cwe have fallen short\u201d but less persuasive at coming up with real, practical alternative structures that are better than the AAUP ideals. Tomasi notes, \u201cThe cohort of professors who currently inhabit the university remain human<\/em>.\u201d But then what inhuman people should replace their judgments? Where are the superior beings who can impose the proper viewpoints on these merely human professors?<\/p>\n Tomasi convincingly argues that today\u2019s professors are biased, vulnerable to groupthink, arrogant and flawed in every imaginable way. But he fails to identify anyone immune to such problems to take their place in making academic judgments.<\/p>\n We get a hint of the problem with Tomasi\u2019s approach when he warns about the danger to viewpoint diversity \u201cif heterodox positions about pandemic responses\u2014such as the Great Barrington Declaration\u2014cannot even be stated without attacks on the character or motives of dissenting scholars.\u201d<\/p>\n Here Tomasi has gone off course. \u201cAttacks on the character\u201d of scholars are a perfectly normal part of a free university. And scholars with mainstream scientific views about the pandemic often had their character and motives attacked.<\/p>\n A college that adopted a standard of no \u201cattacks on the character or motives\u201d of scholars would actually endanger heterodox thinkers much more, since they are the ones often perceived as making harsh criticisms. The best way to protect viewpoint diversity is to defend academic freedom and ensure that scholars are not punished for dissenting, but once you define \u201ccharacter attacks\u201d as forbidden, academic freedom is undermined. The real test of viewpoint diversity is whether you protect and encourage different ideas even when you think they are attacks on your character.<\/p>\n There is no predetermined balance of views that can be assigned by authorities as the correct amount of viewpoint diversity. Instead, we best protect viewpoint diversity by defending academic freedom and tenure among faculty experts, ensuring free speech on campus for all dissenting views, and seeking to encourage a debate of ideas even when views are seen as false and destructive.<\/p>\n John K. Wilson was a 2019\u201320 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement and is the author of eight books, including <\/em>Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies (Routledge, 2008), and his forthcoming book <\/em>The Attack on Academia. He can be reached at collegefreedom@yahoo.com, or letters to the editor can be sent to letters@insidehighered.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my review of the new book Viewpoint Diversity: What It Is, Why We Need It and How to Get It, I focused on several critiques I had of the book. But I think co-editor and Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi\u2019s essay deserves further analysis. For those who believe \u201cviewpoint diversity\u201d is a Trojan horse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[3772,262,23964,18622],"class_list":{"0":"post-47361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-diversity","9":"tag-john","10":"tag-tomasi","11":"tag-viewpoint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}