On The Federalist, Robert Tracinski has a superb piece entitled “Congratulations, Student Protesters, You Just Got Used.”
The protesters raise various issues (such as their indignation that an official at Yale downplayed the need for sensitivity in Halloween costumes) and then unleash all of their demands. What Tracinski finds interesting about the demands is that they would do little or nothing to solve the proclaimed problems, but instead benefit a small segment of the faculty and campus administrative corps. He writes, “But underneath the creepy totalitarianism, there is a more mundane and practical purpose. Once you’re attuned to it, it’s hard not to be struck by how much of this agenda consists of commanding universities to hire a specific group of people: the professional campus ‘diversity’ activists. Universities are exhorted to hire them, promote them, increase their budgets, pay them more, and create new offices for them with new powers.”
These schools are already drowning in pro-diversity programs, courses, and offices. Will more of them solve anything? Or just provide sinecures for additional college grads who’d like to get paid for their leftist hobbies?
Referring to that absurd journalism prof at Missouri, Tracinski writes, “No wonder marginal faculty members are climbing on the bandwagon and signing up to muscle out reporters and guide the young protesters. They hope to ride this to higher-paid, more secure, more powerful positions.”
Read the whole thing.