The College Voice Acted Unethically by Ignoring Issues of D.E.I. Inefficacy

The Society of Professional Journalism—the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States—has a well-known code of ethics.  One of their codes states that journalists should “provide context” by taking “special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing, or summarizing a story.”  A second code states that journalists should “support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.”

Connecticut College's only student newspaper—The College Voice—has not even pretended to abide by these standards.  In its most recent issue, the editors and staff now admit that they “worked to fuel the information battle of the [Occupy CC 2023] movement.”  They also state that they “had a stake in the outcome of the protests” because they “care about the students being affected by the lack of DIEI resources” (also known as diversity, equity, and inclusion resources—or DEI).

What does their “information battle” mean in practical terms?  One only needs to read the paper's reporting over the last two months to answer that question. Essentially, the paper has been actively promoting the parties it favors, willfully ignoring the views of those with differing opinions, and purposefully choosing to avoid a close analysis of the DEI work done by the DIEI.  For these reasons, The College Voice’s reporting has been unequivocally unethical.

(Does this mean the editors and staff are bad people? No. As I stated in my last essay, they are guided by the same herd mentality gripping the rest of the campus.)

What makes their behavior particularly harmful is that The College Voice is the campus’s sole source of news regarding the Occupy CC movement.  Readers have been trusting the paper to help the community better understand the complex events taking place.  Only now—after successfully helping to force President Bergeron to resign—are the editors admitting, shamelessly, that they’ve been one-sided all along.

Indeed, while student protesters occupied Fanning Hall and demanded greater funding for DEI initiatives, somehow it never occurred to the editors to ask a few questions regarding the general effectiveness of DEI programs.  Such an examination would seem particularly urgent given that the protestors were using DEI issues as the basis of their calls for Bergeron’s resignation.  Yet even as readers in the paper’s comments sections pleaded for more balanced coverage, analysis of DEI effectiveness never emerged.

Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to give voice to the many reasonable people questioning DEI efficacy.  Below are some resources to help people understand just how ineffective—and sometimes harmful—DEI programs can be.

• Do Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Offices Achieve Their Stated Goals? - This article summarizes a recent study finding that "there appears to be little relationship between DEI staffing and the diversity climate on campus… In general, student reports on campus climate are no better—and often worse, especially for minority students—at universities with larger DEI staff levels."
  

• How Much DEI Is Enough? - In the final six minutes of this short clip, two black professors—John McWhorter of Columbia and Glenn Loury of Brown—discuss how people with DEI careers face pressure to identify and affirm instances of racism (regardless of the veracity of such assertions). This is because uncovering such “problematic" issues is the primary way these employees justify their jobs’ existence. Not surprisingly, this unnatural career pressure often leads to illogical allegations. (And, I would argue, it leads to manufactured crises such as the one sparked by Dean Rodman King when he resigned simply because Bergeron planned to attend a fundraiser held at a venue that discriminated fifty years ago.)
  

• Get Rid of College ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ Offices - This article points out how much money many college DEI leaders earn.  (An official at UCLA makes $440,000 per year—maybe Dean King should head to UCLA once he’s done with his new job at UMass?) The article also expands upon the points made by McWhorter and Loury, and it points out how DEI offices—in the name of sheltering certain groups from ideas that might make them feel bad—generally stifle an open exchange of ideas on campuses.

• 'Woke Racism': John McWhorter argues against what he calls a religion of anti-racism - McWhorter’s book (which I recommend reading in its entirety) argues that the modern-day “antiracist” ideology popular in DEI circles is akin to a religion.  Adherents to this new religion prioritize demonstrating one’s commitment to dogma rather than doing real work to change people’s lives. McWhorter also argues that followers of this religion end up infantilizing people of color.  For instance, when white students do not even attempt to question the idea that Connecticut College is “oppressive” and “dehumanizing”, they’re inadvertently demonstrating a low regard for the critical thinking skills of those making such extraordinary claims.
  

• What if Diversity Training Is Doing More Harm Than Good? – This article points out that "many popular contemporary DEI approaches...often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary reunderstanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems... For example, the activist Tema Okun’s work cites concepts like objectivity and worship of the written word as characteristics of 'white supremacy culture.'"  Indeed, a Smithsonian museum recently "had to issue an apology after it posted an Okunesque graphic that presented rational thought, hard work and 'emphasis on scientific method' as attributes of 'white culture.'"

• How Microaggression Training Could Harm Minority Students - Microaggressions are a favorite topic at DEI workshops. This article rigorously examines research on microaggressions and explains how trainings on the topic may cause harm.  Below are just a few of the points made in the article.
• Training on microaggressions can potentially harm minority students by teaching them that "statements they would otherwise have viewed as ambiguous or not worth harping upon are, in fact, microaggressions."
• The research linking microaggressions to negative mental health outcomes (including suicide) is fundamentally flawed: "Just because people who report experiencing more microaggressions also report worse health and psychological outcomes does not mean there is a causal relationship between the two."
  
• Research is being conducted into the idea that microaggression training may cause harm in the same way PTSD interventions have been shown to cause harm: "If you tell people 'You are probably going to get these symptoms,' something like a reverse placebo effect kicks in."

• Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm Than Good? - This podcast is pro-DEI.  I’m including it here because it shows how even leading DEI practitioners often doubt the effectiveness of their interventions.  This podcast also showcases DEI bureaucratese—speech characterized by vagueness, jargon, abstractions, and circumlocution.

None of this is to say that everything the DIEI does is unhelpful.  Racism, bias, and privilege do exist and should be discussed.  However, the idea that the office's limitations should not be discussed—which for the last two months has been the position of The College Voice—should concern everyone who cares about these issues.
 
- Zach the Alumnus