Rich Vedder has an excellent piece on Forbes, Three Dirty Academic Words Ending in ‘Ity’ You could probably guess which words they are……..

How did you do?

The first is “diversity.” In academic parlance, the word “came to mean evaluating people not on their intellectual merit, the strength of their character, or other legitimate means, but rather by some biological group characteristic….” Why indeed should anyone be favored (or not) on account of gender or ancestry?

The second is “sustainability.” Vedder writes, “The same people who say global warming is going to hurt us soon despite 15 years of continuous cooling are convincing universities to waste monies and raise tuition to promote bad policies that are costly.” Much folly takes place thanks to this buzzword.

Finally, there is “civility.” To Vedder, this one is the most dangerous of all because “it means that people on campus should express themselves in a way that offends no one. It is anti-freedom of speech, the antithesis of what a great university is all about.” Of course, when people make arguments they should do so in a civil manner, but the mania for civility isn’t about that; it’s about intimidating people from raising arguments against the sacred cows on campus, such as “diversity.”