E-Pluribus | February 28, 2024

Reading - who needs it?; DEI isn't quite dead yet; and how free speech and DEI can coexist.

A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:

Kat Rosenfield: Who Is Reading Even for Anymore?

Are books for obtaining knowledge, understanding human relationship and entertainment, or just garnishments on our public bios to communicate to others what we value? Kat Rosenfield clearly favors the former, but says the latter is the case far too often in our modern technological world, and even if both share books as a common denominator, the two mindsets are miles apart. Via The Free Press.

What can we glean from the library glimpsed over your shoulder on Zoom? What books on a shelf or bedside table signal not just bad taste but bad character? This latter question is the subject of endless pontificating on social media: a well-worn copy of Infinite Jest, for instance, is supposedly a red flag, although it’s hard to say for what. Then there are the dating-site troglodytes whose favorite books are too basic (To Kill a Mockingbird) or too popular (Twilight), exceeded in their heinousness only by those who don’t read much at all.

[. . .]

What’s clear is that reading has been transformed from a private activity to a public one, something you do for an audience. Literature, and especially literature read by young people, has been a flashpoint in the culture wars since before the first outraged parent demanded that Judy Blume’s Forever be stripped from library shelves. But in the age of Goodreads review-bombing, YA Twitter pile ons, Bad Art Friends, and the bizarro universe of internecine literary conflicts known as BookTok, what used to be a niche form of drama has gone mainstream in the digital age. Books have content, but they also are content: posed alongside a glass of wine or cup of coffee in a photo bound for Instagram, or framing an irate TikToker as she monologues about whether audiobooks count as reading.

Actually opening the book and spending however many hours in private, thorough contemplation of the world inside? Of course, you can do this—and lots of people still do—but you’re not going viral that way. A recent interview—complete with sultry photoshoot—with the model Kaia Gerber, whose new book club is to internet culture what that Marilyn Monroe photo was to the pinup era, includes a revealing quote from actress Ayo Edebiri: “That girl be reading. That girl be reading, and she finishes them. A lot of the girls don’t finish the book. They just post ’em.”

This notion, that a person may claim to have read a book even if she has not, you know, read the book, suggests that “reader” is a category one can now identify into, one centered on affinity instead of activity. Consider the character-crafting around which White Lotus character lugged which title to the beach, or GQ’s recent list of the best “status” books for so-called Hot Guys, which contains not a single recommendation based on literary merit.

[. . .]

Of course, books are not the first pastime to be adopted as an aesthetic: consider the Patagonia vest-wearing tech bro, or urban hipsters in prairie dresses, or the vogue for “balletcore” among people who’ve never danced in their lives and couldn’t tell a pas de chat from a trou du cul. There is doing the thing, and then there is looking like you do the thing, which has an entirely different appeal.

[. . .]

It’s possible to imagine a future in which some people read, and some identify as readers, and never the twain shall meet.

Read the whole thing.

Wenyuan Wu: DEI Hasn’t Died: The Rise of Neurodiversity and Multigenerational Diversity

At times when the villain in a book or movie senses defeat, it simply assumes a new shape but does not abandon its nefarious ends. Writing for Minding the Campus, Wenyuan Wu alerts readers to watch for such a transformation taking places in DEI circles as talk of “neurodiversity” enters the conversation.

The New York Times recently unveiled a fascinating shift in the landscape of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs. Instead of the overt focus on race and gender representation, a new trend of rebranding is emerging. Now, we see the rise of more innocuous-sounding initiatives like “culture surveys” and “performance training.”

While opponents should rightfully celebrate small yet meaningful victories in blunting the doctrine here and there, one must be somberly reminded that the DEI behemoth is deeply entrenched in our institutions, and its ideological core of dividing our society by group labels stays unchanged.

To stave off public scrutiny, DEI’s snake-oil salesmen constantly reinvent the grift with new terms and euphemisms. Especially after the Supreme Court struck down Harvard’s race-based undergraduate admissions, zealots have engineered innovative vehicles to perpetuate the ideology.

“Neuroinclusion” or “neurodiversity” is an umbrella concept for accommodating individuals with developmental and learning disabilities such as autism and ADHD. The concept describes different ways people’s brains may work, whereas there is no “correct” way and we must encourage these differences.

[. . .]

DEI programs are undergoing a rebranding through which the same inflammatory, divisive, and identity-based contents are repackaged under different monikers that are more innocent sounding. As usual, with its ever-growing subsector of grievance studies, the higher education complex lends legitimacy to the re-branding.

But the concept of neurodiversity, a recent offshoot from the DEI ideology, is untested and contentious. A veteran occupational therapist warns that the neurodiversity-affirming movement will cause unintended consequences such as overlooking a generation of children who need interventions to develop play, language, communication and academic skills.

Read it all.

Bryan Gentry: DEI Doesn’t Have To Die for Freedom of Speech

While Wenyuan Wu warns above that DEI isn’t dead, Bryan Gentry at Discourse Magazine argues that DEI doesn’t have to die, nor should it. While debate can hinge on what kind of “diversity, equity and inclusion” one is interested in, Gentry suggests we shouldn’t toss the baby with the bathwater, or we’re likely to lose a generation by ignoring its concerns.

. . .I’m not ready to believe that DEI has to die for free speech to flourish. In fact, the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion depend on free speech, and a culture of free speech will be incomplete if it makes DEI a victim of cancel culture. Rather than simply defend or defund DEI, universities and other institutions need to find a way to pursue both free speech and DEI because these principles are two sides of the same coin.

The main reason why we need to both pursue DEI and protect a culture of free speech is that some of the very people whom DEI policies are supposed to help feel silenced, on campus and beyond. That’s a sign of incomplete DEI and incomplete free speech.

According to a 2020 poll by the Cato Institute, 49% of Black Americans were afraid to discuss some of their political views, and 22% feared that their political views could get them fired. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of Hispanic Americans feared for their jobs. This isn’t a matter of racial minorities closeting only conservative beliefs, either: These figures are higher than the share of these populations who voted for Donald Trump that year. Fear crosses the political aisle.

Meanwhile, the Knight Foundation’s report about college students and free expression shows that on campus, only 5% of Black students believe that the First Amendment protects them “a great deal,” compared with 43% of white students. The stereotype of self-censorship imagines white students fearing punishment for unpopular views, but obviously there’s something more going on here. Our campuses would be more diverse, equitable and inclusive if we fostered a more robust free-speech culture that empowers minorities to speak up without fear—even to share views that may offend people on either side of the political aisle.

But these statistics also show that free speech is incomplete without diversity, equity and inclusion. If a university has not empowered Black students to speak freely, it has not achieved an environment of free speech and open inquiry. It is leaving viewpoint diversity and brainpower on the table. Universities need to identify and address the challenges that silence minorities. Otherwise, we are creating a “free speech for me but not for thee” arrangement along racial lines.

As a communications professional, I’m also concerned about the branding of free speech—what people think about the principle. If we let “end DEI” become free speech’s rallying cry, we risk alienating a generation that deeply values diversity and equity and may therefore oppose free speech. Steinbach’s suggestion that Stanford Law students could use their advocacy skills to fight free speech would likely come true.

[. . .]

So how do we rebrand free speech as something integral to DEI rather than something opposed to it? We can find some solutions in a talk [Jonathan] Haidt gave in 2016. While arguing that the search for truth should be a university’s central mission, he acknowledged that social justice could still play a role in that mission. “We need social justice advocates to commit themselves to look more closely” at suspected cases of discrimination and bias, he said, and to examine evidence related to their claims.

Read it all here.

Around Twitter (X)

Here’s Steve McGuire and Ira Stoll on the massive bureaucracies at institutions of higher (alleged) learning:

FIRE brings the fire on Florida governor Ron DeSantis over pending social media legislation, a contentious issue particularly when children are involved:

And finally… I mean, why not?