Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued a much-awaited ruling on universities’ use of affirmative action. But the admissions policies discussed in this decision have become only part of a broader regime on campus that goes by the label Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Tal Fortgang explores the last element in the trio, and distinguishes between a salutary and a destructive interpretation of its meaning, and the latter’s effect on religious institutions:
Collaborative inclusion applies to all kinds of people who may lack access to education, jobs, or other goods, whether they face barriers because of their race, sex, disabilities, or something else. It encourages building ramps next to the stairs, letting Jews join the tennis club, and treating your gay colleagues as equals. Crucially, though, it does not ask institutions to change their most important constitutive characteristics.
Under the guise of collaborative inclusion, which is rooted in values of equality, opportunity, and dignity, a second model often sneaks by. Let us call this one imposed inclusion. . . . It subordinates the value of individual achievement to equality of outcome and fails to recognize the good in institutions that must exclude people or ideas that will not advance their mission. The core tenet of imposed inclusion is that if any kind of participation produces or perpetuates inequalities, it has not gone far enough.
It is the latter vision that has led a New York court to demand that Yeshiva University, an Orthodox school, give funding and status to a club for homosexual and transexual students:
YU would have been able to countenance a collaborative inclusion approach. It has affirmed its policy of welcoming gay students as equal members of its community. By all accounts, it is committed to treating all its students, no matter their identities, with respect, and providing access to its unique fusion of Jewish tradition and modern higher education. That is, unless you change the definition of “respect” and “access” to include a requirement that the school endorse ideas and behaviors it considers contrary to its mission of religious education. And YU insists that allowing the club would be doing just that.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/articles/tal-fortgang/dangers-of-dei-imposed-inclusion/