Here’s a section from an email I received recruiting participants for an international conference in Amsterdam on diversity:
The conference brings together scholarly, government and practice-based participants with an interest in the issues of diversity and community. It examines the concept of diversity as a positive aspect of a global world and globalised society. Diversity is in many ways reflective of our present world order, and there are ways of taking this further without necessary engendering its alternatives: racism, conflict, discrimination and inequity.
I don’t quite understand the final sentence, but rhetorically it sounds like a set opposition between diversity and racism, etc. But what is especially remarkable is that after lining up diversity as a patently “positive aspect” (with no acknowledgment of the actual practice of “diversity” in institutions), it goes on to say that the conference will “explore the full range of what diversity means.” Uh huh. Anybody care to take a shot at submitting a paper that questions the diversiphilia of our time?