Penn’s plan to diversify its faculty would be a reason to celebrate if, by diversity, the authors of the plan meant intellectual diversity. This would be especially true if the ideological uniformity of the Middle East Center at Penn would be diversified. The uniform outlook of Political Science professors Anne Norton, Brendan O’Leary, Ian Lustick and Robert Vitalis can be summed up as “it’s America and Israel’s fault.”
Alas, we learn from a Summer Pennsylvanian article that instead Penn plans to diversify the race and gender of its faculty. The only way to do that is to discriminate based on race and sex against white males. The word diversity is a code word for discrimination, and discrimination is wrong.
When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, he did not say that he dreamed of a day when America would discriminate against white men. He dreamed of a day when there would be no discrimination at all.
Rev. King said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I have a dream that some day the University of Pennsylvania will hire faculty based on the quality of their work and not their race, gender or creed.
Gamaliel Isaac is a Penn alum and current member of staff. His email is Gamaliel.Isaac@uphs.upenn.edu.
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