David French Wades into "it"

Or, David French uses a horrible implementation of DEI to justify his disdain. News at eleven.

David French of the NY Times fingerpaints

Today, I opened my NY Times app on my iPad, and saw the drivel that David French puked out for his Opinion article titled: “I Don’t Want to Live in a Monoculture, and Neither Do You” (gifted link here)

In short, he used the expose of the just fucking horrible implementation, and waste of money that was reported on from the University of Michigan’s DEI efforts.

He leads off with this:

If you think the left is uniquely intolerant, how do you process right-wing censorship? Or if you think the right is uniquely prone to political violence, how do you process far-left riots? When faced with similar behavior from one side or the other, hard-core partisans retreat to specious comparisons. They comfort themselves with the idea that no matter how bad their own tribe might be, the other side is worse.

But there’s a different perspective. Remove yourself from a partisan team, and you can more clearly see that human nature is driving American conflict just as much, if not more, than ideological divisions.

So, he wants to pretend that he’s not part of a partisan team, and being objective. Hmmm, a Republican (but not a Trump supporter), and a Evangelical Christian to the core of his beliefs is not something that engenders either a willingness or an ability to step outside the partisan ecosystem. But, I guess if the NY Times is paying you megabucks you can be about as objective as David Brooks¹.

Fine, whatever.

He then goes on his typical rant about his lived experience from the distant past, where he made his conservative bones:

If I’d read Confessore’s story 15 years ago, when I was litigating free speech cases on campus, I would have had a simple response — there goes the campus left again, intolerant and ineffective.

After all, I’d directly experienced a version of that intolerance in my own life and work. I was shouted down more than once by far-left peers in law school, and much of my legal career was dedicated to responding to what we’d now call D.E.I. excesses — instances where diversity efforts infringed on free speech, religious liberty and due process.

Gee, if you are a right-wing spooge mop, you get to stand in the line of fire. Who would’ve thunk it²?

At least he now realizes that his tribe is at least as bad, if not MUCH worse:

But in 2024, I have a different thought. I have seen and endured right-wing institutions engaging in the same (and sometimes much worse) intolerance as left-wing institutions. When I wrote about my own recent cancellation at the hands of my former denomination, I was flooded with hundreds of personal emails relating similar stories. Even the smallest deviations from the required right-wing orthodoxies were being met with a withering response in conservative churches and conservative religious organizations across America.

Gee, you think?

He goes cherry picking about how this was doomed to failure, whining about how faculty and administrators lean left, and how they over rotated. I am tired of pull-quoting on the article. Go read it — I did give you a gifted link. It is chocked full of the usual hash that French dribbles out. Instead, I will highlight a few of the comments.

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Ian in California gets it.

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Frank from Georgia does well too:

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But Bo in Arizona really misses it. His implication is that it means that unqualified people are hired:

I will say that whenever I have hired a woman or a person of color, they were absolutely qualified. People like Bo assume that the standards are loosened to hire women and minorities. That is not the case. It means that instead of defaulting to a mediocre white male, you actually broaden the search and look for qualified individuals that might not look like yourself.

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Last pull from the comments is Keith from Massachusetts:

Here, he nails my objections to French’s arguments.

Final thoughts, from my professional life

Look, in my professional life, I make a point to seek out people who do not look like me. Women and people of color with different backgrounds make the team stronger, and the diversity of opinions and perspectives greatly improve the team dynamics. Sure, this is empirical, but in my case it is true. Hell, I have even posted about this on my professional blog: The DEI Boogey Man and then the follow up — which I think David French falls — Those Who Get Upset Over DEI Programs.

1. Narrator: David Brooks is not objective by any reasonable measure

2. I suspect that was part of the motivation for his attaining a JD and practicing law to counter the “libs”

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