The Trump administration’s efforts to roll back “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) on college and university campuses have gotten a lot of attention, and rightly so. There has also been significant pushback, with many institutions simply faking compliance by renaming their DEI departments while pursuing the same Marxist agenda. Still, I think conservatives can be forgiven for feeling like we’re gradually winning on this front.
What we tend to overlook is the damage DEI, in its various guises (like “Affirmative Action”), has done to American higher education and society at large for more than a generation. Even if Trump and future Republican administrations succeed in completely dismantling the DEI regime, we will still have to live with the fallout for at least another generation.
That’s because the real problem with DEI-based admissions, hiring, and promotion policies is not that they lower standards for minorities; it’s that they lower standards for everyone.
For example, let’s say you’re a DEI honcho at a university and your goal is to increase the number of black students in your medical school. Since blacks, on average, don’t score as high on the MCAT as whites or Asians, that means lowering the required score for black applicants. You can do that—or at least, you could do that—without also lowering the required score for white or Asian students. Institutions do it all the time and have for years. Most applicants either don’t notice or don’t complain. They just go elsewhere.
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However, once students are on campus, you’re faced with a dilemma. Those who score lower on the MCAT are statistically less likely than their peers to perform well on exams and other evaluations. The only solution is to lower the score required for a passing grade, from, say, 80 to 70. Or maybe just move to a “pass-fail” system, as some medical schools are currently doing, essentially eliminating grades altogether.
The problem is that you can’t do that just for black students. Unlike different admissions criteria, which you can attempt to justify using high-sounding bureaucratic jargon, having different grade requirements for different groups of students would be too blatant. Everyone would notice—not least, the students themselves. You could very easily have a mutiny on your hands.
So now all your students—not just the black students or the women or whoever—must master only 70 percent of the material to pass, whereas they used to have to master at least 80 percent. How can this not produce a generation of doctors who are less knowledgeable and less prepared than their predecessors?
The left insists that opposing DEI policies is racist. Well, of course, they’d say that. But it’s nonsense. Being anti-DEI is the opposite of racist. It’s about prioritizing merit—ability, accomplishment, native intelligence—over irrelevant factors such as skin color.
To illustrate this point, let’s consider an analogy that’s been used by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, among others. The NBA, made up of the best basketball players in the world, is nearly 80 percent black. What if the owners decided, in an effort to promote “diversity,” that from now on at least 50 percent of the players they sign will be white? What would that do to the level of play in the league?
The answer is obvious. The level of play would decline precipitously. The league would become watered down. White players who currently aren’t good enough to make an NBA roster would suddenly find themselves getting playing time. More to the point, several black players who are good enough would be unfairly cast aside—all in the name of diversity.
This is, admittedly, an imperfect analogy. Detractors will say it’s inherently racist because I’m implying blacks are only good at playing basketball, whereas whites are better at things like medicine. But I’m saying no such thing. What NBA contracts and medical school admissions have in common is that both are, or should be, awarded based solely on merit. Only the best players should get into the NBA, regardless of race, and only the best applicants should get into medical school—again, regardless of race.
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I’m using medical school as an example because healthcare is something that affects us all. I’m sure my black friends and neighbors are just as interested in having the best possible doctors as I am—and I doubt many of them care about race. I certainly don’t.
But obviously, this problem is pervasive throughout higher education, from undergraduate through graduate and professional school. We all have a vested interest in making sure universities produce the best possible engineers, accountants, teachers, and social workers. They can’t do that when they’re admitting applicants and conferring degrees based on anything other than merit.
Because if you base those decisions on something else, like diversity, you are likely to achieve some measure of diversity—the superficial kind, at least—but you are unlikely to end up with the most qualified people consistently. Ultimately, all of society suffers.
I guess that’s the “equity” part of DEI. When we prioritize diversity and inclusion over merit, we’re all equally screwed. All we can do to address this problem is what conservatives in government, academia, media, and the corporate world are trying to do right now: Stamp out DEI wherever it’s found and make sure society never goes down that suicidal path again.
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Image by Sweeann on Adobe Stock; Asset ID# 1230199974
