Posted by Eugene Volokh:
"Diversity Pledge" from the University of Virginia Law School Student Bar
Association:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_02_08-2009_02_14.shtml#1234134947
[1]Phi Beta Cons (National Review) reports on this pledge that the
Student Bar Association is encouraging students to sign (the ...s are
in [2]the pledge itself):
2009 Diversity Pledge
As a community, we believe that....
Every person has worth as an individual. Every person is entitled
to dignity and respect, regardless of class, color, disability,
gender, nationality, race, or sexual orientation. Thoughts and acts
of prejudice have no place in the UVA Law community.
Therefore, we pledge...
To treat all people with dignity and respect, to discourage others'
prejudice in all its forms, and to strive to maintain a climate for
work and learning based on mutual respect and understanding;
And from this day forward,
Knowing that both the UVA Law community and the world will be a
better place because of our efforts, we will incorporate this
pledge into our daily lives.
Some, I suppose, will find it threatening; I find it vapid. At some
very high level of generality, almost every decent person agrees with
the notion that "Every person is entitled to dignity and respect,
regardless of class, color, disability, gender, nationality, race, or
sexual orientation." For instance, even many people who believe that
homosexuality is wrong believe that people who are attracted to
members of the same sex are entitled to dignity and respect -- they
just think that those people shouldn't engage in homosexual conduct.
The trouble is that the dispute is chiefly about what constitutes
"prejudice," and what the obligation "[t]o treat all people with
dignity and respect" means. If "prejudice in all its forms" means
irrational hostility, then again this is banal to the point of
irrelevance: Few people support irrational hostility. If "prejudice in
all its forms" means all differences in treatment, then few people
would condemn such a broad category of behavior; to do so, they'd have
to oppose all race- and sex-based affirmative action, all immigration
restrictions (since those discriminate based on not being an American
national), all exclusions -- no matter how justified by the demands of
the task -- based on disability, and so on. The same would be true if
"prejudice in all its forms" covers all generalizations and
preconceptions based on the attributes, however tentative. How many
rational people would (or should) have no preconceptions about the
possible dangerousness of a passerby on a dark street based on whether
the passerby is a man or a woman? How many rational people would (or
should) have no preconceptions about whether a blind person should
drive a school bus? And these are just some of the most obvious
examples.
Of course, I suspect that "prejudice in all its forms" means behavior
that right-thinking people treat as prejudice. We can guess what the
drafters' notion of right-thinking might be, though I suspect that
even the drafters, however ideologically similar to each other they
might be, wouldn't completely agree on that. And what do the signers
mean by that? Beats me.
So this is all a long way of saying that the diversity pledge strikes
me as quite empty of any intellectual value -- it's a form of
political posturing rather than serious engagement with the actual
controversies and problems that modern law schools face. And I suspect
that it's also quite empty of any political or community norm-setting
value, partly for the reasons I mention above and partly because it
would so clearly be understood as political posturing.
By the way, I should note that many of these criticisms can also be
levied at the Pledge of Allegiance, which likewise lacks deep
intellectual meaning. But if the Pledge works, it works precisely
because it is aimed at conditioning the minds of small children, and
because its message is understood to be empty of specific commitments
that would be substantially controversial in modern American society,
which may help it function as a broadly uniting national ritual.
("Under God" is probably the most controversial part, and that only
mildly so in modern America; and my sense is even many irreligious
people deal with the phrase simply by not saying it, usually with the
understanding that the exclusion doesn't affect the general meaning.)
I would have thought that these defenses would not be available as to
a law school "diversity" pledge.
Thanks to [3]John Rosenberg (Discriminations) for the pointer.
References
1.
http://phibetacons.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzBjODFhYTMxNjZkYjU1N2Q0NDk0OTc1ZDlmNTlmYzQ=
2. http://www.law.virginia.edu/html/news/2009_spr/diversity_pledge.htm
3. http://www.discriminations.us/2009/02/uva_laws_pledge_of_allegiance.html
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