Since the killing of George Floyd last May, there has been a stampede among higher-education leaders to embrace “anti-racism” in their curricula and even missions. Very few academics have dared to register any dissent.
In today’s Martin Center article, however, Canadian professor Mark Mercer does exactly that.
He writes, “It is not the business of a university to combat racism or to call it out or to promote racial justice or harmony. In fact, enlisting itself in anti-racist struggles cannot but turn a university away from its academic mission.”
Much as it appeals to their vanity and desire to signal their virtue as “progressives,” higher-education leaders ought to stick to teaching and searching for knowledge. That certainly could include the study of racism just as other phenomena are studied, but not the kind of activism that anti-racist advocates like Ibram Kendi demand.
But don’t we need to “decolonize” the curriculum? Mercer replies, “Opening research and teaching to neglected areas is an academic imperative. It should not, however, be done in order to make minority students and professors feel welcome. Nor should it be done because it’s thought to correct past social wrongs or to create a more just future.”
The worst aspect of the “anti-racism” fad is that it constricts discussion, which is absolutely central to educational institutions. At many colleges and universities, anyone who voices any disagreement with the party line on racism and America’s purported evils is apt to suffer a severe rebuke.
Mercer concludes, “For my part, I would hold universities to university values even if serving those values did little to further racial justice or harmony. Fīat investigationem ruat cælum.”