《The Diversity Myth》翻书笔记

作者：David Sacks & Peter Thiel
出版社：The Independent Institute
副标题：Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus
发行时间：1998, the second version
来源：下载的 pdf 版本
Goodreads：3.68（41人评级）
豆瓣：无

全书主旨：

We called our book The Diversity Myth to summarize the uniformity that has occurred: campuses are full of people who look different but think alike. This is not real diversity, but pseudo-diversity. Real diversity requires a diversity of ideas, not simply a bunch of like-minded activists who resemble the bar scene from Star Wars.
大学所应该有的，真正的多样性，并不是大家种族、性别、性取向的不同，而应该是大家观点的不同

作者介绍：

本书的第一作者 David Sacks 是 Peter Thiel 30多年的好基友，从大学同学到 PayPel（COO），然后一直到现在参与 PayPel帮 的投资，David Sacks 本身也是两家独角兽公司（Yammer and Zenefits）的 CEO，目前重仓比特币投资领域，是 Peter Thiel 主要合作伙伴之一，书后面对他的介绍是：
a research fellow at The Independent Institute and a consultant at McKinsey & Company. He has worked as a legislative aide for U.S. Representative Christopher Cox and as a research assistant for judges Richard A. Posner and Robert H. Bork. He has appeared on PBS's Firing Line, regularly comments on the news for C-SPAN, and writes articles for The Wall Street Journal, as well as numerous other newspapers and public policy magazines.

本书成书于1996年，Peter Thiel 那时候29岁，书后面对他的介绍是：
a research fellow at the Independent Institute and heads up Thiel Capital International, LLC, a hedge fund based in Palo Alto, California. Mr. Thiel has written for The Wall Street Journal, and is a regular commentator on the PBS program “Debates Debates” and the C-SPAN show “Washington Journal.”

个人观点：

读这本书的原因有两个，第一是因为 Peter Thiel，第二是因为内容围绕美国的高等教育，全书前半部分围绕「多元文化论」不能是什么，后半部分围绕「多元文化论」应该是什么，因为创作于20年前，所以也是一本从侧面了解美国高等教育发展的好书

本书基本上反应了 Peter Thiel 对于美国高等教育的基本观点，认为美国高等教育为了「政治正确」而消灭了多样性，也就能理解他会成立奖学金鼓励美国大学生辍学创业了

也许正是因为他认为多样性应当是大家观点的不同，而不是种族、性别、性取向的不同，所以才有了他为川普站台的一幕，因为川普具有更强的「观点多样性」

虽然本书没有提及，但是 Peter Thiel 在大学的时候受到了 René Girard 所创立的 mimetic theory 的影响，所以 Mark 了后者的《Deceit, Desire and the Novel》，国内对 René Girard 的研究也有一些，看了一些资料，确实非常值得关注，有可能是因为 René Girard 的 mimetic theory 才让 Peter Thiel 从根本性上排斥竞争和认为垄断对于独角兽发展模式的价值

Independent Institute 这样的智库是很多思想的产地，TTCSP 是一家专门研究智库本身的机构，跟踪了全世界6300多家智库，TTCSP 会每年发布一份智库的研究报告，并根据研究结果发布一份智库的年度排名，看了2016年的年报还是蛮有收获了，马上2017年的年报就要发布了，后面会看一下

摘录：

In attacking multiculturalism, Mr. Sacks and Mr. Thiel readily acknowledge that neither they, nor apparently anyone else, know precisely what the term means. At Stanford, and other universities, where multiculturalism may have less to do with a coherent educational program or philosophy than with a series of interlocking attitudes and practices, what multiculturalism in the curriculum assuredly does not mean is a renewed emphasis upon the mastery of foreign languages or the close study of complex civilizations. All of the multicultural texts are read in English, and it appears that most of them were written since World War II. We are not, in other words, talking about close and respectful study of the Koran which has shaped the consciousness of millions of people throughout the world since the seventh century. We are not, to be blunt, talking about a substantive introduction to the values and identities of peoples who differ radically from today's youth. After all, distance in time offers one of the most promising avenues to an encounter with people whose values and assumptions have differed radically from our own. No. We are talking about various participants, many of them “revolutionaries,” in today's increasingly homogenized global system. Thus the most popular multicultural texts are written by people who may differ from elite Stanford students by sex, “sexual preference,” skin color, wealth, or place of birth and access to opportunity, but who share many, if not all, of the values of Stanford students and of a majority of the Stanford humanities faculty

Of course, at the time we began writing The Diversity Myth, these thoughts were not foremost in our minds. Our primary goal was simply to present an accurate account of what “diversity” politics and its alter-ego “multiculturalism” have meant at a major university, the place these doctrines originated and have been most fully developed and implemented. Such an account would help to resolve the larger diversity debate taking place across America—a debate unfortunately engulfed in confusing rhetoric. We wanted to illuminate that debate with hard facts. For example, “multiculturalism,” as practiced on today's college campuses, is hardly the source of cosmopolitanism and openness that the term connotes. In practice, it has nothing to do with the study of other cultures, and it actually has resulted in budget cuts for departments teaching foreign languages. Requirements that graduating students be proficient in a foreign language have also been gutted in recent years. The main purpose of multiculturalism, it seems, is to propagate intellectual conformity in the name of “diversity.”

Indeed, it may come as a surprise that universities have limited diversity in a number of significant ways. At the same time, they have been very successful in promoting the myth that diversity is alive and well. But consider the reality:

• Economic diversity. The enormous cost of multicultural programs, personnel, services, and departments—what Stanford's president has collectively called a “mini-welfare state”—has stifled economic diversity. The price of an elite undergraduate education now exceeds $100,000 for four years, and steep tuition hikes continue to squeeze middle- and low-income families who do not qualify for financial aid. The result has lent credence to the view that elite universities are playgrounds for the rich.
• Political diversity. Multicultural hiring policies, despite their stated goal of diversifying the faculty, have led to ideological conformity in many departments. At Stanford, more than eighty percent of the faculty are members of the same political party. (That party happens to be the Democratic Party, but the problem would be just as acute if eighty percent of the faculty were members of the GOP.) This figure actually understates the lack of political diversity because the few Republican professors tend to be moderates or centrists, while many Democratic professors are far-left.
• Racial diversity. Segregation still exists on our college campuses. In the name of multiculturalism, universities like Cornell, University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford segregate African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans into “race dormitories.” The net result of this ghettoizing is to remove a large number of minority students from the rest of the campus and to limit diversity of interaction. Not surprisingly, there are fewer interracial friendships. Stanford even conducts separate graduation ceremonies for different minority groups, further dividing the campus along racial lines.
• Intellectual Diversity. The most important kind of diversity on a college campus is intellectual diversity, and this is the kind which has suffered most. Speech restrictions, political grading, ostracism of nonconformists, unqualified denunciations of the West, and a curricular obsession with oppression theory and victimology (all discussed at length herein) make clear that toleration of dissenting viewpoints is not a multicultural virtue. Because some students may be recalcitrant about losing their free-speech rights, Stanford also has hired a “Multicultural Educator” to “inculcate ideas” in those eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who “resist educational efforts” and “avoid personal commitment” to the new regime. Ironically, as if to confirm our point, Stanford's leaders responded to the first edition of this book with a new public-relations strategy to trumpet their school's supposed diversity in which they warned independent-minded faculty to shut up because “an institution must speak with one voice, not many.” To university administrators, apparently, diversity means a chorus of voices all saying the same thing.

Since myths tend to evaporate if people think about them, the new restrictions essentially are designed to stop people from thinking—or at least from expressing their suspicions. Thus, if “multiculturalism” is universities’ euphemism for the myth of diversity, “political correctness” may be defined as the sad reality. We called our book The Diversity Myth to summarize the uniformity that has occurred: campuses are full of people who look different but think alike. This is not real diversity, but pseudo-diversity. Real diversity requires a diversity of ideas, not simply a bunch of like-minded activists who resemble the bar scene from Star Wars.

Fortunately, as more people turn their attention to the problem, the myth of diversity is starting to unravel. As the reaction to the first edition demonstrated, fewer and fewer people are buying the politically-correct line that political correctness does not exist. For one thing, there are too many anecdotes, too much evidence that the problem has grown out of control—and new horror stories seem to arrive daily. But more important than the sheer number of examples and anecdotes is the fact that these anecdotes have resonated powerfully with people across the political spectrum. The reason is simple: almost everybody has experienced something similar. The reader's personal experience with political correctness may not have been quite as catastrophic, but it was unpleasant nonetheless. That is why there is such a broad coalition emerging against multiculturalism—all the way from traditional conservatives to 1960s-style liberals who believe in the virtue of free speech to Marxists who teach Shakespeare.
The first step in thinking about “diversity,” both on and off college campuses, must involve an understanding of what is actually happening. It is for this reason that the two of us wrote this book. We need to have the courage to confront “multiculturalism” and “diversity” honestly. And once the rhetoric has been stripped away, our readers can decide for themselves whether they would prefer genuine diversity on our campuses and beyond, or merely the myth of it.

If one had to identify a single location where multiculturalism began, the best candidate would be Stanford University, located near Palo Alto, California. Privileged by ideal climate, sumptuous facilities, and lots of money (by the end of the 1980s, its endowment was well over $2 billion, and its annual budget approached $300 million), Stanford is one of America's leading institutions, sustained by hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer grants each year. In 1985, U.S. News and World Report, in its annual survey of colleges and universities, ranked Stanford first in the nation; the competition for admission reflected this status, as over 17,500 applicants vied for 1,500 places in the entering class.
But beginning about 1986, capping long-term trends, the most powerful administrators and faculty, along with many student leaders, moved aggressively to turn Stanford into the nation's first multicultural academy. In his welcoming remarks to Stanford's entering class of 1993 (given in September 1989), university president Donald Kennedy went so far as to declare that Stanford's multicultural venture was “a bold experiment that must succeed.” Conducted on the 25,000 human beings who made up the Stanford community, this “bold experiment” transformed the campus—revamping the curriculum, reshaping student “awareness,” and implementing new codes of conduct. The experiment certainly was more allencompassing than anything Kennedy had done to a lab animal in his former incarnation as a biology professor. Once successfully constructed at Stanford, this new multicultural community would serve as a prototype for the nation. “If we cannot succeed here,” Kennedy declared, “we cannot succeed anywhere.”
But President Kennedy never got the chance to report on the progress of the multicultural experiment at the graduation ceremonies for the class of 1993. In August 1992, Stanford's Board of Trustees forced his resignation. The immediate cause centered on a financial scandal in which the university had misappropriated millions of dollars in federal research monies. The real reasons for this crisis of confidence, however, went far deeper: Trustees, congressional representatives, alumni, and the general public had begun to perceive that the great multicultural experiment had brought the very opposite of higher learning. It had brought speech restrictions, a new kind of intolerance known as “political correctness,” a hysterically anti-Western curriculum, the increasing politicization of student life, and campus polarization along racial and ethnic lines. Like Columbus's multicultural journey, which turned from delight to disillusionment, the Stanford community had gradually soured on multiculturalism. Before doing so, however, multiculturalism had changed the outlook of a generation of American leaders, and because it is still deeply entrenched, it continues to graduate new disciples into society who will seek to implement multicultural policies.

Courses like “Europe and the Americas” promote a certain type of diversity, to be sure. Marx's demands for a class-based revolution contrast with Menchu's utopian feminism which in turn differs from other writers’ stress on the deprivations of American Indians, inner-city slums, and everyday life. But the new CIV tracks do not accomplish the one educationally justifiable thing they promised to, namely, an examination of non-Western cultures, like Confucian China or medieval Islam. This, it must be remembered, had been a major rationale for the change from Western Culture to CIV. Instead, Professor Rosaldo and his colleagues remained solidly focused on the West in an effort to expose racism, sexism, and classism. In its practical application, then, CIV actually narrowed diversity significantly. For instead of surveying the ideas of a range of thinkers over the last 25 centuries (who cannot collectively be placed in any ideological categories), many of the new tracks focus largely on issues relevant to late-20th-century political activists like Professor Rosaldo.

An honest study of other cultures might entail a drastic reassessment of the role and nature of the West, but hardly in the direction Stanford's activists probably imagine. While many cultures have practiced slavery, only in the West did the doctrine of individual rights develop, that shattered the cultural basis for slavery. More generally, the various forms of oppression with which activists charge the West—racism, sexism, elitism—pale in comparison to those found in non-liberal societies such as the ethnocentrism of China, the subordination of women in Islamic states, and the oppression of the untouchables in India. The belief in the dignity and freedom of the individual was not affirmed by societies that bound women's feet, sold their own people into slavery, routinely performed clitorectomies, or enforced rigid caste systems.

M 2 Multiculturalism: A New Word for a New World I do not know what a clear meaning of multiculturalism is. Maybe you have one, you have a clear definition. I have yet to encounter one. —Stanford President Gerhard Casper, who succeeded Donald Kennedy in 1992 ulticulturalism” filled the vacuum created by the elimination of the West. By the fall of 1989, it seemed as though almost everybody at Stanford enthusiastically supported “multiculturalism,” or at least was invoking this word in every imaginable context: A Multicultural Educator advised Stanford's residential staff on implementing multicultural programming in the dormitories, specially selected Multicultural Editors helped the Stanford Daily provide more multicultural perspectives, and ethnic theme dorms and focus houses placed multiculturalism at the center of student life. As the Stanford Daily observed, “multiculturalism is evident in various classes, dorm events, ethnic community centers, and other aspects of daily campus life—from top-level curriculum decisions all the way down to what you'll be eating for dinner tonight.” These efforts culminated with the establishment of the Office for Multicultural Development (OMD) in 1990, whose prominent location on the same floor as the Office of the University President underlined its importance to campus life. Sharon Parker, the new director of the OMD, reported directly to President Kennedy, a status otherwise enjoyed only by vice presidents and deans.

Towards the end of the quarter, Professor Jackson engaged students in “The Great Debate”—the dilemma over whether blacks should “straighten” their hair or remain “natural.” The “greatness” attributed to this debate (implying that one of the most important things a black student could think about is his hair) was an indication of just how far Professor Jackson and his multicultural followers had strayed from the color-blind “promised land” of Martin Luther King: They lived in a world where blacks were judged neither by the color of their skin nor by the content of their character, but rather by the straightness of their hair.

辅助概念：

Kwanzaa:
is a week-long celebration held in the United States and in other nations of the African diaspora in the Americas. The celebration honors African heritage in African-American culture and is observed from December 26 to January 1, culminating in a feast and gift-giving. Kwanzaa has seven core principles (Nguzo Saba). It was created by Maulana Karenga and was first celebrated in 1966–67.

The Rainbow Agenda:
The Rainbow Agenda was a set of demands put forth by a coalition of student groups at Stanford University in the late 1980s. These student groups included the Black Student Union, MEChA, the Asian American Student Association, and the Stanford American Indian Organization. The demands included requests concerning student and faculty diversity, support for community centers, and a "renewed commitment to discourage Indian mascot fanatics."

Menchu:
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (born 9 January 1959) is a K'iche' political and human rights activist from Guatemala. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's indigenous feminists during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting indigenous rights in the country. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998.

Generation X:
Generation X, or Gen X, is the demographic cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the Millennials. There are no precise dates for when Generation X starts or ends. Demographers and researchers typically use birth years ranging from the early-to-mid 1960s to the early 1980s.

Great Chain of Being:
The great chain of being is a strict hierarchical structure of all matter and life, thought in medieval Christianity to have been decreed by God. The chain starts with God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, moon, kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, precious metals and other minerals. The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, "ladder of being") is a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle (in his Historia animalium), Plotinus and Proclus. Further developed during the Middle Ages, it reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism

单词列表:

words	sentence
saga	the whole tragic saga, together with keen analysis of how all this could have happened
indispensable	Future historians will find this book indispensable
Intolerance	Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus
Koran	We are not, in other words, talking about close and respectful study of the Koran which has shaped the consciousness of millions of people
deplore	Mr. Sacks and Mr. Thiel provide abundant examples of the excesses they deplore
chilling	But the most chilling core of our authors’ argument does not
voucher system	others to a voucher system for school choice
curricula	others to multicultural curricula
stifling	America's leading schools have been stifling diversity
Georgetown University	Georgetown University recently dropped its “great authors” requirement.
Chaucer	no longer have to know anything about Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton in order to graduate
Milton	no longer have to know anything about Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton in order to graduate
Federalist Papers	As a result, no mention is made of the Federalist Papers
vis-à-vis	our book discusses the merits of the West vis-à-vis the rest of the world
Ebonics	“Ebonics” as a legitimate dialect of the English language that should be taught in schools
Kwanzaa	While Christianity was out, however, “Kwanzaa” was in
oppressive	what responsibility do you hold for the racist, oppressive, and discriminatory
discriminatory	what responsibility do you hold for the racist, oppressive, and discriminatory
engulfed	a debate unfortunately engulfed in confusing rhetoric
rhetoric	a debate unfortunately engulfed in confusing rhetoric
illuminate	We wanted to illuminate that debate with hard facts
stifled	has stifled economic diversity
ghettoizing	The net result of this ghettoizing is to remove a large number of
ostracism	Speech restrictions, political grading, ostracism of nonconformists, unqualified denunciations of the West
denunciations	Speech restrictions, political grading, ostracism of nonconformists, unqualified denunciations of the West
trumpet	with a new public-relations strategy to trumpet their school's supposed diversity in which
chorus	To university administrators, apparently, diversity means a chorus of voices all saying the same thing
evaporate	Since myths tend to evaporate if people think about them
unravel	as more people turn their attention to the problem, the myth of diversity is starting to unravel
anecdotes	For one thing, there are too many anecdotes, too much evidence that the problem has grown out of control
catastrophic	The reader's personal experience with political correctness may not have been quite as catastrophic
odyssey	Our odyssey began with the compilation of the numerous examples in this book
Christopher Columbus	Christopher Columbus, the First Multiculturalist
Eden	Columbus even believed that he had reached Eden
Montaigne	Columbus's early adulation of New World primitivism would be reflected in one of Montaigne's essays
Carib	The explorer who first depicted the “noble savage” also had discovered the Carib tribe
cannibal	whose name later would provide the basis for the word “cannibal.”
El Dorado	nobody today believes, as did Columbus, that such a hidden country—an El Dorado or Shangri–la—will be found in some
Shangri–la	nobody today believes, as did Columbus, that such a hidden country—an El Dorado or Shangri–la—will be found in some
disintegration	and the public's fear of social disintegration is growing
heterosexual	religious and secular, heterosexual and homosexual,
antidote	the antidote to America's problems or a cause of them
bellwether	Stanford is a bellwether for the nation
denunciation	faculty engaged in an unqualified denunciation of the West
pave	their fateful protest of January 1987 would pave the way for a very different kind of academy
syllabus	among the CIV tracks, according to the 1992– 93 program syllabus
ex nihilo	In practice, of course, a number of faculty members found it far from easy to create a new canon ex nihilo
Menchu	Marx's demands for a class-based revolution contrast with Menchu's utopian feminism which in turn differs from
untouchables	the oppression of the untouchables in India
Provost	Vice Provost William Chace was one of the few to express alarm at
millenarian	Just as the OMD would guide the university through a millenarian “transformation,”
San Francisco Chronicle	Chip Curran, a sophomore, told the San Francisco Chronicle
schism	Curran's proposal caused a schism among the ranks of the Stanford Daily's
proportional representation	“proportional representation” is not a sufficient answer unless both groups already agree to this standard
dismay	To the dismay of football fans and school patriots
Puritanism	The New Puritanism