HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Campuses Encourage Racial Balkanization.

Normally, “deans of diversity affairs” are not in the position of fending off accusations of racial insensitivity. It’s their job to make sure that trigger warnings and speech codes expunge every last drop of bigotry from campus life. But Concordia’s mandatory minority orientation session struck many students as discriminatory in and of itself. And understandably so.
As the article notes, Concordia has hosted a similar minority orientation session every year. The practice is widespread throughout the American higher education, and it is representative of the way that academic-left ideology believes in fighting bias: Through ethnic studies programs, racially exclusive housing, and safe spaces—that is, cordoning women and minority students off from the sea of bigotry that allegedly surrounds them.

We’ve previously highlighted the evidence that this approach is woefully ineffective. Social science research suggests that self-segregation efforts often exaggerate racial tensions. Instead of creating a sense of solidarity and common identity among students, campus bureaucracies often encourage division and mistrust.

Concordia’s diversity bureaucracy is convinced that the outrage from students of color of the racially segregated orientation event is a misunderstanding, because the aim is merely to welcome minority students and make them feel at home. How could anyone possibly object to that? Well, this seems like an instance where a 2007 quote from Chief Justice John Roberts seems particularly apt: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Insufficient opportunities for graft.