
In 2005, the Los Angeles Times hired me as a columnist. That was great news (for me). But the best part was when
Her real complaint wasn't so much that the
"It seems that your new leadership ... is entirely out of touch with your readers and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms. So although the number of contributors to your Op-Ed pages may have increased, in firing Scheer and hiring columnists such as
Some might stub their frontal lobes on the idea of a "diluted gamut" (whatever that is). But to paraphrase Boon from "Animal House," when Bluto reminisced about the Germans bombing
Other than boastfulness, I bring this up for a specific reason. Without intending to, Streisand actually managed to synthesize the problem with diversity mania. You see, by bringing me and some other writers aboard, the
Moreover, ethnically Scheer and I are almost indistinguishable. We're also both white males. The only meaningful difference between us, besides age, is that I'm a conservative. When Streisand talked about diversity, she meant a diversity of attributes -- sex, ethnicity, skin color, etc. -- but not viewpoints. It's like when
The Streisand episode came to mind while I was watching the ridiculous media feeding frenzy over a memo written by a since-fired
His real "crime," however, was his suggestion that the obsession with hiring more female engineers ran into some structural problems that could not be solved with ever more aggressive outreach. Whether for reasons of culture or biology (or both), women are more reluctant than men to pursue degrees in engineering and computer science.
The data are on his side. More than 80 percent of computer science and engineering majors are male, while women receive about 60 percent of biology degrees and 75 percent of psychology degrees.
To listen to the hysterics, this can be explained entirely by the sexist bias of the computer science and engineering fields -- and the big corporations that depend on them.
This is nuts. It's absolutely true that women were once blocked from many careers. But since those barriers were lifted, women have flooded into, or even have come to dominate, all manner of fields. Is it really plausible that sexism is the primary, never mind sole, explanation for female under-representation in computer science and engineering?
Sure, sexist bigots in medicine, law, journalism, the clergy (!) and almost every other field saw the light. But the
No doubt there are real injustices out there. The demands of motherhood and the culture of
The issue here isn't diversity, but conformity. Everyone must agree with a very narrow dogma about not just sexual equality but the approved ways of enforcing it. At a shareholders meeting in June,
Exactly: Our gamut is undiluted and our paradigms are made of oak.
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Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor-at-large of National Review Online.