ancy Cantor, the President and Chancellor of Syracuse University, has made diversity her mantra.  This, in and of itself, is not a shortcoming.  There are many things to be said in favor of diversity.  However, there is all the difference in the world between (i) the truth that there are many things to be said in favor of diversity and (ii) the truth that there is everything to be said in virtue of diversity.  At a university, it is only in conjunction with other goods, such as intellectual excellence, that diversity is a strength; and it is this truth that Chancellor Cantor seems roundly intent upon ignoring. 

What happens with diversity depends upon a host of other things.  First among these are intellectual aspirations.  A sea of diverse people doing stupid things is not a novel form of intellectual excellence, or a brilliant display of creativity.  Quite the contrary, it is none other than a sea of diverse people doing stupid things.  No amount of hand-waving and political posturing will make it otherwise.

So to focus upon diversity to the exclusion of intellectual excellence is to do something quite inimical to the well-being of a university.  Indeed, it is to be politically expedient at the expense of intellectual excellence.  And who suffers in this case?  The answer, painfully, is everyone and, in particular, minorities—the very folks to whom Chancellor Cantor has sworn allegiance.

It is this truth, more than any other, that disturbs me so.  If there is anything that Nancy Cantor knows, it is that having rigorous intellectual training makes all the difference in the world in terms of the wherewithal of individuals, be they minorities or whites or whatever, to advance themselves.  So it is profoundly disconcerting that she has so roundly disregarded this truth. 

And disregard it she has.  In the three years since she has been chancellor of Syracuse University, one is hard pressed to find a single sentence from her lips that pertains simply to the pursuit of intellectual excellence.  She has not uttered a single paragraph that would give anyone any reason to think that she also animated by high intellectual ideals and that she delights in the intellectual excellence of minorities.  If this is right, then the truth is not simply that her trademark is diversity.  For this way of putting things understates the truth.  Rather, her trademark is vapid diversity. 

I am deeply, deeply disturbed by those who make so much of diversity that they ignore the reality of intellectual excellence.  I am all the more disturbed by those who unquestionably know better.  Chancellor Nancy Cantor unquestionably knows better.

Few things are more morally fulsome than enhancing one’s own political standing upon the backs of the helpless.  And there is an inescapable respect in which Nancy Cantor is doing none other than that.  She knows that, in the absence intellectual excellence, blacks and minorities have no chance whatsoever of holding their own in a fiercely competitive world.  So one has to ask: Why would a person who firmly grasps this truth so masterfully ignore it?  To this question, there can be no good answer.

Without denying that truth that intellectual thought itself has come to have a more diverse character to it, what most certainly does not follow from that truth is that intellectual excellence itself is an empty notion. 

I have at times wondered whether Chancellor Cantor suffers from some form of self-hatred.  For the only thing that seems to animate her is the charge of racism.  Insist that all whites are racists or maintain that one’s aim in the classroom is to disabuse whites of their sense of privilege: and one thereby has Nancy Cantor’s attention.  Why, she becomes a formidable ally.  Never mind that she herself is white and wallowing in privilege.  This is one of the reasons why I suspect the absence of purity and sincerity of heart across the board.

In so many ways, Nancy Cantor is part of the problem in that she is contributing to a horrendous divisiveness in society; for she can only see the virtues of minorities and the vices of whites.  This does not make for racial harmony.  It simply foolish to think that it does.

A white who behaves in this way always puzzles me.  For if the claws of racism miss the white woman called Nancy Cantor, even as she wallows in privilege, then presumably they can other whites, too.  Indeed, privilege is no barrier to their doing so. 

Does Chancellor Nancy Cantor have a good heart?  I assume that she does.  All sorts of people do.  However, I am reminded of the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  A conception of the university that trivializes the significance of intellectual excellence, in the name of placating minorities, is a conception that harms minorities and whites.  Worse, it is a conception that makes minorities twice a victim: First, minorities are placated at their own expense.  Second, they are left without the skills of intellectual excellence that is essential to their taking their place in society with confidence and independence.

It goes without saying that Cantor has her allies.  But truth is not a function of numbers.  Slavery was not virtuous simply because at one point in history nearly all the world embraced it. 

More poignantly, though, there is a profound sense in which free speech has been stymied here at Syracuse University, as many are afraid to say anything critical for fear of being dismissed as sexist.  So far from being the very embodiment of the market place of ideas, a bubbling sea of intellectual thought, the university is quickly becoming a stagnant pond of ideology.  This is not a problem for Nancy and the colleagues who roundly support her, as they have their degrees and their tenure.  However, it is devastating for those student minorities, especially blacks and Latinos, who now think that being black and Latino either exhaust the intellectual landscape or constitute the most important aspect of it. 

Martin Luther King once remarked that a man can’t ride your back unless it is best.  There are a lot of bent backs at Syracuse University.  And someone is having the ride of a lifetime at the expense  of bent backs.

Chancellor Cantor inherited a university that was growing in academic stature.  She has turned her back upon that growth.  This she has done not at her expense, but at the expense of those very minorities whom she has pledged to help.