Once upon a time there was a small private college with a Great Books curriculum. The students read philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein, literature from Greek epic to French novel, and theologians from North Africa to Geneva.
One day the Chief Education Officer of the college called together his advisory committee. “Our college is not diverse enough,” he said. “I propose that we retire our Great Books system and introduce new elective classes on the diversity of the human condition. We should institute a new Diversity Department to review our activities and make sure that our students are being exposed to the diverseness of humanity.”
So the small college abandoned the Great Books curriculum and instituted a Diversity Department. The DD carefully monitored the college to make sure that there were acceptable quotas of males, females, and various ethnic groups represented in all the readings, campus activities, and class rolls on campus.
After a few years, the DD officials noticed that the new diversity requirements were not working. “We are not achieving a true diversity,” they reported. “We have equal numbers of men and women, but many of the women are not feminists, so feminists are still a minority on our campus. Moreover, most of our Eastern European and Asian exchange students are capitalists, so non-capitalist thought is being marginalized.”
The Chief Education Officer reviewed the DD report, and he agreed that it was rather odd to monitor gender and ethnicity instead of students’ opinions. Therefore, the DD proposed a new program. The college abandoned the old quotas for gender and ethnicity, and instead they instituted new ones for various opinion-groups: capitalists, Marxists, rationalists, empiricists, feminists, chauvinists, industrialists, agrarian idealists, etc. Quaker fundamentalists received full-ride scholarships because their quota was the slowest to fill.
After a few years of monitoring the new campus diversity, the DD met again to discuss a crisis.
“Apparently the socialist quota on campus this year is not very persuasive,” said one of the diversity officials. “Other students are starting to assume that since the socialists aren’t very intelligible, neither is socialism.”
“This is terribly unfair,” said the head of the DD. “It hurts diversity to present bad defenses of ideas. We should find a way to make sure all our opinions are presented in the best possible way.”
“Hear, hear!” exclaimed one of the committee members. “The capitalist students should read Karl Marx!”
“And the socialists should read Adam Smith,” another rejoined.
“Don’t forget the chauvinists. They should read J. S. Mill,” the chairwoman interrupted.
“And the feminists should read Aristotle,” replied the first.
So the Diversity Department spent the rest of the day hammering out a plan for introducing students to the greatest diversity of ideas at the greatest possible advantage. When they had finished, they submitted a proposal that the college adopt…a Great Books curriculum.
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