Diversity Thursday

You've heard me use the term, "Diversity Bullies" quite a few times over the decade or so we've been doing DivThu. That term is actually a nice term for these people because at their core they are totalitarians.

They hate and they destroy because they cannot defend their diktat in open discussion.

They are dangerous because they have so many in power cowering in a corner wetting themselves in fear that they might be denounced like some poor kulak in a Stalinist of Maoist show trail.

Here is a nice crisp example.

What does it take to force the resignation of a world renowned scholar from a top-shelf institution? Read it all of Jonathan Turley's article for the full background, but here is the email;

Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 4:26 PM
To: Anathea Portier-Young
Cc: Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty
Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

I’m responding to Thea’s exhortation that we should attend the Racial Equity Institute Phase 1 Training scheduled for 4-5 March. In her message she made her ideological commitments clear. I’ll do the same, in the interests of free exchange.

I exhort you not to attend this training. Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance.

We here at Duke Divinity have a mission. Such things as this training are at best a distraction from it and at worst inimical to it. Our mission is to thnk, read, write, and teach about the triune Lord of Christian confession. This is a hard thing. Each of us should be tense with the effort of it, thrumming like a tautly triple-woven steel thread with the work of it, consumed by the fire of it, ever eager for more of it. We have neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it. Keep your eyes on the prize.

Paul

——————–
Paul J. Griffiths
Warren Chair of Catholic Theology
Duke Divinity School

Some day people will look back at this era as a dark ages in academia, where institutions of higher learning were led by sniveling cowards willing to surrender all aspects of post-Enlightenment liberty just so they will be denounced last.

As for Professor Griffiths, he's a giant among ants.