Heather McDonald At The City Journal has a piece entitled Multiculti U on the excesses of the University Of California system.

Clearly, this is going on in colleges and universities across the country:

‘It’s impossible to overstate the extent to which the diversity ideology has encroached upon UC’s collective psyche and mission.  No administrator, no regent, no academic dean or chair can open his mouth for long without professing fealty to diversity.  It is the one constant in every university endeavor; it impinges on hiring, distorts the curriculum, and sucks up vast amounts of faculty time and taxpayer resources.’

Well, maybe it’s just more visible now, and even more visible in California.  McDonald gets some pushback in the comments, which are worth a read.

From those comments:

‘Eric Hoffer is quoted as having said something to the effect that great causes begin as movements, turn into businesses and end up as rackets. The UC 2 described by Heather is what has happened to the great causes of the sixties.’

Here’s that quote, as Hoffer highlighted the nature of all ideologies, and the reasons true-believers in ideologies spend so much time minding your business and producing so little of value on their own.  Of course, it’s good to realize there are many other things going on regarding education, including technology, the end of an era of economic dominance, student-loans, rising tutitions and colleges and universities competing upmarket with amenities and high salaries.  They deserve some of what they get, and we all suffer.

In other news, it’s good to hear the folks over at NPR, radio people with a a rather collectivist, 60’s idealist bent and a Dewey-esque vision of civil society have a new facility.

The choicest bits:

— NPR raises beehives on the roof to help pollinate its green roofs.

— The building is expected to be LEED Gold certified.

— The almost 800-person staff is extremely diverse, and they all are really glad the be in the new building.

On behalf of my fellow Americans, I have a few questions in response:

1.  Are there hippies, or any other organically-sensitive, environmentally-conscious human beings on the roof as well, to help keep the bees? 

2.  Have the bees been certified as low-emission bees and can we eat them as a source of protein?

3.  Is there some sort of diversity board or oversight committee to determine how diverse the staff actually is, and how glad they really are to be in the new building?

I hereby nominate myself as Director Of NPR Diversity Coordination, Chancellor Of Gladness, and Galactic Overlord Of Climate Change.  You’ll find me equally at home on Wall, Main and Sesame Streets, NPR.

Call me.

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Related On This Site:  Repost: Mark Cuban From His Blog: ‘The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won’t Get Better Any Time Soon’…From The New Criterion: ‘Higher Ed: An Obituary’,,,Ron Unz At The American Conservative: ‘The Myth Of American Meritocracy’

Analagous to old media? What to change and what to keep: From The Arnoldian Project: ‘Architecture, Campus, And Learning To Become’

Should you get a college degree, probably, but you also probably shouldn’t lose sight of why you’re going and divorce yourself entirely from the cost:  Gene Expression On Charles Murray: Does College Really Pay Off?…Charles Murray In The New Criterion: The Age Of Educational Romanticism…

A deeper look at what education “ought” to be:  A lot like it is now?: A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’

Allan Bloom thought about some of this in The Closing Of The American Mind, at least with regard to what he saw as a true liberal arts education: Update And Repost: ‘A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche / Strauss Connection’