Princeton Is Not Racist, but Race-Obsessed

The true nature of ‘antiracism’ presents a mortal danger to the university’s commitment to genuine equality of treatment and academic excellence.

I n a strange new twist of the “Princeton is racist” saga, the United States Department of Education (DOE) announced on September 17 an investigation of Princeton’s self-declared racist practices. In his virtue-signaling competition with leaders of other top U.S. universities, President Christopher Eisgruber created this crisis by asserting, in a letter addressed to the Princeton community on September 2, that “racism and the damage it does to the people of color persist at Princeton” and “racist assumptions remain embedded in the structure of the university itself.” This, as the DOE now points out, runs afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and raises concerns that Princeton’s previous representations to the government of full compliance with non-discrimination and equal-opportunity requirements may have been false.

In its official response, Princeton tries to have it both ways: We are not racist according to the law, but we are, nevertheless, like the entire country, structurally and systemically racist (SSR). That is, we are racist but not because of anything specific we do. In his letter, Eisgruber gives one and only one example as evidence of SSR at Princeton: the fact that “there are 9 departments dedicated to European languages and only one small department dedicated to African studies.” Never mind that our most under-represented minorities, African-American and Hispanic students, happen to be mostly English and Spanish speakers and that European languages and cultures not only are of interest to the vast majority of American citizens but also are prevalent throughout the world, including Africa and, of course, both American continents. This was the best Eisgruber could do. At a town-hall meeting to discuss Eisgruber’s letter, a more coherent example, purely hypothetical, was advanced by a faculty member who observed that one can be systemically but not individually racist by hiring historians of the Renaissance while not hiring historians who study how racist Princeton was in the past. I’m not making this up.

Princeton is, of course, not at all racist in the usual sense of the word. I don’t mean by this that individual members belonging to various identity groups may not sometimes feel out of place or unwelcome on campus. I don’t doubt that individual students have felt rejected, humiliated, or even harassed in their social interactions with members of other groups. Prejudice exists everywhere, of course, among people of all races and ethnicities, and bullies are present even at Princeton. I mean to say that no form of institutional racism exists at Princeton in any quantifiable sense.

Though Princeton is not racist, it certainly is race-obsessed — that is, obsessed with racial considerations in determining university policy and in its communications about race on and outside campus. In this it does not stand alone. In the wake of the death of George Floyd, almost all of our nation’s colleges and universities have embarked on a massive regimen of mea culpa and self-flagellation for failing to uphold racial justice, as if somehow Derek Chauvin’s sadistic action was a direct result of what we teach or fail to teach in our classrooms. Most educational institutions appear to be on the verge of abandoning their policy of making decisions concerning admissions, hiring, promotion, and the like based on achievement and demonstrated promise, in favor of racialist ones based on group identities. Recently, for example, the English department at the University of Chicago, a university known until now for maintaining an exceptionally rigorous academic program and for the famous Chicago Principles of academic freedom, announced that, for the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, “only applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies” will be accepted. I quote this as an isolated example, but similar things are happening on campuses around the country.

What started as a laudable desire to repair the historical injustices suffered by African Americans, first under the name of affirmative action and later with the mantra of diversity and inclusion, has now degenerated into a bizarre form of naked preferentialism based on racial identities. This system is sustained by large bureaucracies dedicated to implementing it and a dubious ideology masquerading as an approach to intellectual inquiry called Critical Race Theory (CRT). The proponents of CRT have somehow been able to describe themselves to the world not as race-obsessed or racialist, as they truly are, but under the benign moniker of “antiracists.” Antiracists, like antifascists (Antifa), are the opposite of what their self-chosen names suggest. Both are neo-Marxist groups that claim to fight racism or fascism with a racialist ideology, in the case of the first, and by fascistic methods of forcefully suppressing dissenting voices, in the case of the second. As the main determining factor in understanding human actions, antiracists have replaced the Marxist concept of class with that of race. Like classical Marxists, they embrace equalitarianism and reject capitalism, but they differ substantially from their predecessors in rejecting universal values in the name of a radical cultural relativism.

In the words of Ibram X. Kendi, the present intellectual leader of the movement, “Racial discrimination is the sole cause of racial disparities in this country and in the world at large” and “to be antiracist is to reject cultural standards and level cultural difference.” Kendi, who is the second holder, after E. Wiesel, of the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities at Boston University and who has recently received numerous prizes and distinctions, also declares, “Capitalism is essentially racist” and “racism is essentially capitalist.” Does that imply that teaching the principles of market-based economy is also racist? Should such courses be banned? Is socialist economy OK, i.e., antiracist? In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo, the other guru of the movement, claims that “attributing inequality between whites and people of color to causes other than racism” is a form of racism.

Do all the liberal-minded people who have showered Kendi and DiAngelo with praise and exhorted people to “educate themselves” with their books understand the consequences of these totalitarian statements? In his fascinating article “Suicide of the Liberals,” Gary Saul Morson makes a powerful parallel between this widespread support of antiracists among liberals today and the support received by Russian revolutionaries (intelligents) from the educated classes (liberals) before the 1917 Communist revolution.

Here is another quote from Kendi’s Twitter account:

We are either being racist or antiracist. Is that clear for you? There’s no such thing as “not racist.” The term has no meaning other than denying when one is being racist. We should not have words in the dictionary that don’t have definitions.

Does this make sense to you? to Eisgruber? Does it make sense to Jack Dorsey, the cofounder of Twitter, who has recently donated $10 million to the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research run by Kendi?

In the name of racial equality, the antiracists call for the elimination of universal norms and standards in favor of racially determined ones. Many have gone so far as to claim that individualism, hard work, stable families, logical thinking, and scientific objectivity are characteristic of “white” people and that any attempt to assert that they are universal virtues must itself be viewed as racist. Such statements have appeared recently, for example, in a graphic display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Never mind that most of these values are characteristics of all well-functioning societies. Any positive affirmation of a particular cultural achievement of Western civilization, be it in science, mathematics, medicine, economics, politics, or the arts, is viewed with suspicion as a manifestation of white-supremacist sentiment. Despite its many past and present imperfections, what we should not be embarrassed to call Western civilization has a remarkable built-in ability to correct and self-improve, while at the same time generating the extraordinary advances in knowledge and the betterment of the human condition that we have seen in the past centuries.

Perversely, CRT and other Marxist theories are using Westerners’ sense of guilt with respect to colonialism and shameful past practices of slavery to attack the very mechanism that has allowed Western society to eliminate these practices. Conquest, pillaging, and slavery have been by no means unique to the Western world, and the fact that these are now almost universally condemned largely on account of Western activism goes unmentioned by the antiracists.

At the above-mentioned town hall, Eisgruber advanced yet another possible piece of evidence of racism, based on a survey, not yet released, that apparently shows that at graduation, when asked to evaluate their experiences at Princeton, black students are far less positive than other students. This is indeed unfortunate and something the university should try to understand and work toward improving. It is hard to make an informed comment without seeing the survey, but still one may ask this: Is it possible that black students, after being taught for years by antiracists to be on the lookout for every possible sign of racist sentiment both in and outside the classroom, any possible micro-aggression, any instance of double meaning that conceivably could hide a hostile sentiment, might end up feeling marginalized, or discriminated against, as a direct result of this indoctrination? Or, more generally, that antiracism’s hyper focus on race is leading to more segregation and distrust between racial groups? Could this be yet one more divisive effect of CRT? Is it possible that in their obsessive push for antiracist remedies, universities are doing more harm than good to the very groups they profess to protect? In a similar spirit, various studies show that diversity training meant to reduce biases may actually reinforce them and decrease opportunities for minorities.

Is Eisgruber aware that the true nature of “antiracism,” as promulgated by Kendi, DiAngelo, and others, presents a mortal danger to Princeton’s commitment to genuine equality of treatment, non-discrimination, and academic excellence? Is he really sold on racialism as a new vision for Princeton, or is he just using it as a virtue-signaling ploy to delay the present pressures coming from the justice-warrior activists on campus, in the hope that all this may soon pass away? Or does he perhaps sincerely and naively believe, as he expressed himself at the town hall, that there is no conflict between the policies of racialism under the code name of “identity and inclusion” (which as we all know is not meant to include differences of opinion) and the traditional non-racialist, universalist values of the university?

Rather than wait to see which path Eisgruber will end up choosing and risk that things will continue to deteriorate to the point of no return, I hope that our faculty, alumni, students, and parents will start demanding that our president present a clear and unambiguous answer on where he stands and what future he envisions for Princeton. The president has to explain what are the end goals of his fight against the alleged systemic racism and give us specific criteria by which progress can be measured. After all, the policy of diversity and inclusion has been vigorously pursued for decades, and yet it seems we have not gone very far at all. In many ways we are worse off now — as Princeton, like a microcosm of the entire country, is more divided than ever.

He has to tell us in unambiguous terms what definition of racism he is operating with, that of the DOE, that of Kendi, or something else. He also has to formulate what it means to be free of racism. According to Kendi, for example, “There is no such thing as a not-racist idea,” only “racist ideas and antiracist ideas” — the modern CTR analogue of the Leninist precept that those who are not with us are against us. Does Eisgruber agree with this? How does this square with the principles of academic freedom that he still says he supports?

Is our university going to change, as it should, in the direction of offering more of the best humanity has to offer, based not only on the West but also on the glories of the Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and other great civilizations of the world? Or is it going to regress to a parochial view of the world dominated by narrow identity considerations? Will Princeton deal honestly with the issue of under-represented minorities not by instituting artificial quotas and meaningless morale-boosting bureaucratic measures, which often produce opposite results, but instead by addressing head-on core issues such as the shamefully deficient pre-college educational system? In that sense it is fair to note that among the measures Eisgruber announced in his letter of September 2, there is one we can all applaud: the initiative to start a “Princeton program of continuing general education or related outreach programs which will benefit under-represented minorities.”

I conclude by noting the remarkable fact that CRT, once a marginal academic theory within academia, has now become pervasive throughout society at large, including not only the mainstream media, such as the once-formidable New York Times, and most cultural institutions, but also major corporations and even top government institutions such as the State and Treasury Departments, FBI, the military and various national research laboratories. This illustrates, as happened so often in the past, the enormous influence of ideas, good or bad, to shape the course of history. Thus fighting to preserve the integrity of our universities is also, in the larger scheme of things, a fight to preserve the integrity of our most cherished American ideals.