Times Opinion has published several critiques of conservative ideas on U.S. education. Here's an opposing view.
 | By Vanessa Mobley Op-Ed Editor |
Readers of Times Opinion — Michelle Goldberg's columns and guest essays by Janai Nelson and Henry Louis Gates Jr. — have seen our coverage of Gov. Ron DeSantis's efforts to fundamentally change K-12 education, as well as public university education, in Florida. |
Many of the changes DeSantis has made through the "Stop W.O.K.E Act" and other efforts have been aimed at restricting the way students in Florida learn about the lives of L.G.B.T.Q. and Black Americans. Just last week, DeSantis was back in the news over the standards the state has set for the way middle school students learn about slavery. |
The debate over what students learn and why isn't restricted to Florida: Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed a law closing diversity, equity and inclusion offices in Texas' publicly funded colleges and universities. Columns and guest essays published here have argued stridently against such efforts. |
In a guest essay today, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow and writer at the Manhattan Institute who was recently appointed by DeSantis as a trustee of New College of Florida, offers a very different view. He examines his own understanding of the ways in which the presence of diversity, equity and inclusion programs "promote a stifling orthodoxy that undermines the pursuit of truth." |
The end of affirmative action in college admissions will change the way we think about who attends college and what the college experience is like. D.E.I. programs on campus may, in fact, face even greater scrutiny in the future. Rufo's views represent one such strain of thought. |
His essay asks readers to examine D.E.I. programs on their merits while also interrogating their effectiveness. Then Rufo goes further, interrogating how they work, which he describes as often trying to "restrict the range of discourse, push a narrow political ideology on the campus community and micromanage the language that professors, administrators and students should use." |
For many people, the goal of a university education is to acquire the skills to think for themselves. In closing his essay, Rufo cites the University of Chicago's Kalven Report, which called for "the neutrality of the university" as an ideal. While the application of politics to achieve the aim of neutrality is complicated at best, Rufo provides a way of understanding what he describes as the desired end point: "a wide diversity of opinions and a shared commitment to truth." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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