From university to diversity.

At the heart of John Henry Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University is the recognition that since truth is one, the many disciplines that turn toward that unity would converge into a university. Newman, however, was anything but naive. His warning was both realistic and stern:

"You will break up into fragments the whole circle of secular knowledge if you begin the mutilation with the divine."

Newman feared and prophesied that without a core of unifying truth, the university would degenerate into a diversity where fragments of knowledge would be dispersed in every direction but toward the centre. In the university, all knowledge is centripetal; in the diversity all knowledge is centrifugal.

Listen to the proponents of the modern Diversity: the president of the "University" of Michigan states: "Learning in a diverse environment benefits all students, minority and majority alike." The MIT Faculty Newsletter says of diversity: "It is the only way to prepare students to live and work effectively in our diverse democracy and in the global economy."

Even the Ayn Rand Institute, hardly a promoter of Cardinal Newman's idea of a university, complains that "diversity is metastasizing," now demanding "linguistic diversity" under which English teachers grant equal validity to ungrammatical writing; for "diversity" in beauty pageants where the unattractive are not discriminated against; for "diversity" in oratory contests "under which mutes are not excluded."

President Birgeneau

In Canada, the most notable promoter of the disintegration of the university into a diversity in recent times is Robert Birgeneau, president of the University of Toronto. Drawing attention to and offering praise for the array of academic programs and services on campus that support sexual diversity, President Birgeneau declares:

"If anything is needed now, it is to move beyond the institutional level of acceptance to broaden awareness and to celebrate sexual diversity on our campuses in much the same way that we celebrate our remarkable ethnic and cultural diversity" (Toronto Star, Oct. 27, 2003).

What sparked his statement was the spring 2003 fifth anniversary celebration of the gay/lesbian program at University College now called Sexual Diversity Studies. He may also have heard about a presentation made by a Catholic scholar of high repute, Peter Kreeft, on the issue of sexuality at St. Michael's College in November 2002. Some "gay" audience members felt that he (Kreeft) was uttering "homophobic sentiments."

At any rate, Birgeneau's "idea of diversity" is not broad enough to include "homophobia." But more than this, the University of Toronto president warned against allowing "inflexible opinions" to deter us from "raising awareness" and encouraged students to move beyond "tolerance" to "celebration" of sexual diversity.

One may indict the president for being inflexibly opposed to all those students who believe that the "University of Toronto" should be a university. One may criticize him for allowing the buzzword "homophobia" to stigmatize all students who have any objection to homosexual sexual activities. One may point out to him that "diversity" is not a moral concept, but simply a word that describes an array of different things. One may also appeal that the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's proposal of a "Just Society" for Canada implies a rejection of injustice, rather than a "celebration" of injustice in the context of "diversity."

But these criticisms point to a position that is so utterly bankrupt that one fears that there is no rational activity still functioning that could receive the salutary benefits of reasonable argumentation. Is it not essential to education to help students to distinguish reality from illusion, truth from error, right from wrong, good from evil, wisdom from foolishness? As St. Paul reminds us, "Light and darkness have nothing in common." Vice is the privation of virtue, not its twin sister. When virtue is demoted to vice, and vice elevated to virtue, we invite mayhem, not the "celebration of diversity." The child who has a kleptomaniac for a mother, an alcoholic for a father, and juvenile delinquents for siblings, is not the lucky beneficiary of domestic diversity, but the victim of a dysfunctional family.

Rational inquiry

It is indeed a strange conception of the university to see it as being progressive when it aims to exclude all rational inquiry and well-formulated argumentation on a wide variety of socially significant issues. Given this approach, it becomes difficult to distinguish a university from a penal colony or a lunatic asylum.

The ancestral root of the true university is not the notion of diversity, but that of dialogue. For the ancient Greeks, to dialogue is to speak across the logos (the measure or truth). Through honest dialogue, a diversity of people could come to see and share the same reality. Inquiry, dialogue, and truth are the basis for democracy. The current displacement of dialogue by diversity produces not democracy but demagoguery. What would be the point of becoming educated if being knowledgeable and being ignorant have equal value? Why not confer diplomas upon admission?

It is hard to envision a more empty-headed and self-destructive idea than the celebration of diversity as a replacement for the quest for truth. Is homosexual activity something we must "celebrate" or be ostracized from society as "homophobes"? Two sobering thoughts: 1) Epidemiologists estimate that 30% of all 20-year-old homosexual males will be HIV-positive or dead of AIDS by the time they are 30. 2) Melissa Parker of Brunel University reports (Reuters News Service, Sept. 9, 2003) that "Thousands of young gay British men are courting death ... flouting safe sex and actively trying to catch HIV." At the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, she pointed out that catching AIDS was no longer a risk for such men, but a goal. Perhaps we might consider replacing the word "celebration" with the word "lamentation."

Donald DeMarco is Professor Emeritus of St. Jerome's University. Adjunct Professor/ Holy Apostles College and Seminary