Center for Equal Opportunity - Attacking "Diversity" A Review of Peter Wood's Diversity, The Invention of A Concept

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Attacking "Diversity" A Review of Peter Wood's Diversity, The Invention of A Concept

The word “diversity” is ubiquitous these days, especially in academia. Peter Wood, a professor of anthropology at Boston University, has written an invaluable book, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, that explores the rise of the concept and, one hopes, will hasten its demise. There is, I must quickly add, nothing wrong with diversity per se, meaning a variety of people, with different skin colors and national origins, outlooks, and experiences. The trouble is that, whenever one hears the term, it is almost certainly because the speaker has an agenda that favors racial and ethnic discrimination in order to achieve a particular and predetermined demographic mix, while opposing merit and assimilation to American culture.