We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots
by Richard Amesbury
Good evening, McSubstackencies. Semesters are mercifully winding down for most colleges and universities. It’s been a tumultuous year for education, in general, but higher-ed institutions, in particular, have been reeling from intense government oversight. One contributor, who also happens to be a college professor, shares insight into how some schools are coping with/capitulating to the feds’ demands.
“Harvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish new endowed professorships in a sweeping bid to reshape its faculty under the banner of ‘viewpoint diversity,’ according to two people familiar with the initiative.”
— The Harvard Crimson
On behalf of the university, I’m pleased to announce our earnest and long-overdue commitment to diversifying our faculty. No, not the reckoning we broadcast to great fanfare in 2020, which we have repudiated in exchange for federal funding. No, I refer instead to “viewpoint” diversity.
For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education. Many ideas that enjoy enormous popularity among billionaires—cryogenic immortality, disregard for punctuation, the Antichrist—have scandalously been excluded from our labs and classrooms.
No longer. We solemnly vow to dismantle systemic barriers to inclusion—such as shared governance, apolitical job searches, and the discriminatory practice of vetting ideas—and to ensure that all viewpoints, however dubious, enjoy equal footing in the academy.
We have found, to our consternation, considerable groupthink within the professoriate on matters that are otherwise widely debated. This academic monoculture stifles heterodox viewpoints on disputed questions such as the safety of vaccines, the square root of four, and the earth’s topology.
Moreover, campus surveys suggest that many students feel compelled to self-censor. Out of fear for their grades, they often respond to exam questions by drawing on what their professors have taught them, thereby reproducing expert opinion. We affirm that, henceforth, no student shall have their preconceived notions challenged or be pressured to reject falsified hypotheses.
As befits the nation’s most expansive—and expensive—marketplace of ideas, we commit to putting substantial resources behind ideas that are presently viewed with skepticism by scientists and scholars. By leveling the intellectual playing field, we seek to achieve a more democratic university to bring about a less democratic world.
That’s where billionaires like yourself come in. For a mere $10 million gift, you can help us remake the intellectual landscape by endowing a prestigious chair in an underrepresented subfield, such as geocentric astronomy, high-energy phlogiston physics, or patriotic history. Your generosity would enable us to lure academic job seekers who might otherwise scorn our hidebound institution in favor of innovative civics centers, private think tanks, and parents’ basements.
Without donor intervention, a system intended to narrow the range of plausible opinion cannot be trusted to diversify. To achieve equity, we need affirmative action. What the marketplace of ideas requires, in short, is venture capital.
By funding the production of what will resemble knowledge, donors like you can safeguard our university against monopolization by experts. Think of this as sponsored content, which will be virtually indistinguishable to students from what is produced within established academic disciplines. The occupant of your paid post will enjoy, by association, the esteem due a lifetime of selfless devotion to a rigorous methodology, but without the self-imposed duty to abide by its norms and acknowledge its sometimes inconvenient results.
I know what you’re thinking: This all sounds great, but what if a diversity hire changes their mind, thus upsetting the carefully engineered equipoise of viewpoints and putting my investment at risk? You’re not wrong. To maintain a perfectly stocked marketplace of ideas, no one can be allowed to buy anything. But rest assured, diversity hires will be selected for their intellectual intransigence and resistance to rational argument. These are, after all, outré viewpoints.
Thank you for your commitment to the right kind of diversity. All viewpoints matter—yours especially.
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Seems legit.
"I know those people. They are everywhere. Most of them are too busy buying politicians or Supreme Court Justices, to care about endowing a university chair, but it could become a trend if you post a lot on X.