Apr 18, 2017

What is the least diverse place in America?

The college campus! Colleges want students to look different but think the same.

What is the least diverse place in America? It's the institution that most actively seeks racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity: the college campus! Colleges want students to look different, but think the same. Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, explains.

This video with Charlie Kirk is part of an exciting partnership between PragerU and Turning Point USA that will include videos with other young conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Antonia Okafor, Matt Walsh and more!  Visit FreetoThink.org to learn more. 

It's appalling that, in the 21st century, there is still so little diversity on American college campuses.

This. Cannot. Stand.

It’s not who we are. It’s intolerable. It’s time we demand a change. It’s time to stage a protest, to storm the dean’s office. We will not be ignored.

Diversity is our strength. I’m not talking about diversity of skin color. Been there, done that. Today’s campuses are more racially integrated than at any time in history.

And I’m not talking about gender diversity. Women already make up the majority of college graduates. And if your concern is non-binary gender, there is no place on earth more accepting of hims, hers, zims and zirs than a college campus. I’m not even talking about sexual diversity. You can pretty much experiment with anyone you want, in any way you want, as long as you get a consent form signed and notarized in advance.

No, the diversity I’m talking about is diversity… of thought! Let me say it again, in case you missed it: Diversity of thought.

That’s right: people expressing different points of view on an issue. At most colleges today, that’s a dangerous, revolutionary idea – if that different point of view is not on the left. The moment you enter college, you enter an indoctrination center. Remember orientation week? It starts there and never stops. They tell you to be open-minded, but they don’t really mean it. Almost all your professors are on the left – nearly 12 to 1, left to right, according to a recent study by Econ Journal Watch. There are many departments at many colleges that don’t have a single conservative voice. The administration invariably supports leftist positions. And, all those diversity administrators – they depend for their livelihood (that means their paycheck) on creating victims.

Diversity of race, or gender, or sexuality, or any of the other distinctions du jour that universities glorify are, at best, superficial and, at worst, just plain destructive. It’s destructive to any real learning. If you don't study Shakespeare because he was a white male, you have been deprived of learning from the most brilliant playwright who ever lived.

And it’s destructive of a peaceful campus environment because it pits racial, ethnic, and gender groups against one another. In other words, diversity, as practiced on your typical college campus, divides – not unites – people.

And diversity of thought? The free exchange of ideas?  You know, what college is actually supposed to be about? Not happening.

If you’ve been in college for a few years, ask yourself this: When was the last time you heard a professor or a TA make the argument that capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system? Or that socialism always leads to poverty? Or that the post-World War II order created by America has been the freest and most prosperous time in human history? Or that the cause of high crime rates in black communities has very little to do with historic racism? And God forbid if a conservative speaker should show up on campus and dare to say any of these things.

If the ideas of the people on the right have so little merit, why bother to protest? Shouldn’t their bad ideas just die on their own? Isn’t the purpose of a liberal education to expose students to differing points of view? Turns out that the “liberal” in “liberal education” means leftist.

Here’s how the University of California at Berkeley, the pinnacle of political correctness, describes itself: “Our goal is to transform UC Berkeley into an equitable and inclusive academy of the highest caliber – one that fully honors the diversity of our students, faculty and staff."

Give me a break! Berkeley needs to be transformed? It’s not diverse enough? After all these years of expanding equity and inclusion? Bull-crap! It positively reeks of cissexist heteropatriarchy! Say that three times. I don’t know what it means, but it sure sounds bad.

Walk around the Berkeley campus, or almost any campus, and you will see plenty of blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians – even a straight white guy or two. College is a place where they want everyone to look different, but think exactly the same.

It’s like a freaking cult!

At some point you have to stand up, separate yourself from the crowd, and say, “Enough!”

It’s time to diversify thought on campus. It’s time to demand a real education. God knows, you’re paying for it.

I’m Charlie Kirk, President of Turning Point USA, for Prager University.