John Rosenberg has an excellent post at Discriminations on, among other things, Lee Bollinger’s latest slippery utterances in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Rosenberg offers a superb paragraph’s description of the filigreed nature of diversity goals:
Since preferentialists speak in platitudes and not principles, their defense of racial preferences provides no guides to policy makers or guidelines by which to judge the policies they defend, other than the numbers of favored minorities they produce. How “critical” is having a “critical mass,” and how “massive” must it be? By what principle (can’t escape them), if any, should its size reflect the “mass” it attempts to represent, and where must that “mass” be – local, national, anywhere in the world? When, where, and why do differences, say, among Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans disappear into their presumably shared Asian-ness? Are Cherokees fungible, for representational purposes, with Cheyenne? If some discrimination is acceptable to produce the desired result, why not more discrimination to produce an even better result? Is there a limit, and if so where does it come from?
Any idea? I certainly don’t know. By all means read the rest of the post.
