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The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture

Heather Mac Donald

3.96 · Rating details · 1,177 ratings · 220 reviews

America is in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Students emerge into the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these char ...more

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Hardcover, 288 pages

Published September 4th 2018 by St. Martin's Press

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May 04, 2020 Amora rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: political-science

There is a crisis happening right now in our universities, and their faculties are at fault. Gender and race pandering, in the form of affirmative action and kowtowing to unreasonable demands, has paved the way to failure for many students, especially the ones they feel are the most vulnerable. Works by Milton and Aristotle have been replaced by contemporary activists who are trying to push an agenda in many classrooms. How did this all unfold? Mac Donald traces the problem to decades of bowing ...more

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Jul 08, 2018 Rebecca rated it really liked it

Sometimes hysterical, openly biased, often dripping with scorn and irony, this is still a fair take on today's academic holy grail, racial and gender equity.

Mac Donald's thesis is diametrically opposed to the ways I have been taught to understand diversity, so when I began reading I was both curious and apprehensive ... curious about her data, worried about her attitude. The author carefully refrains from political name-calling (I don't recall seeing the word "liberal" used once with its politic ...more

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Mar 19, 2019 John rated it did not like it

A sheltered white man enters his first year of college. Having grown up in a culture where his beliefs about white male superiority are never questioned, the white man is shocked and horrified when an academic and/or fellow student challenges his views with facts and data. In response, the white man throws a veritable temper tantrum, running around screaming that universities are mean to him. Using his cultural power as a white man, he succeeds in getting professors fired and students expelled f A sheltered white man enters his first year of college. Having grown up in a culture where his beliefs about white male superiority are never questioned, the white man is shocked and horrified when an academic and/or fellow student challenges his views with facts and data. In response, the white man throws a veritable temper tantrum, running around screaming that universities are mean to him. Using his cultural power as a white man, he succeeds in getting professors fired and students expelled for disagreeing with him and sucks his college campus into the white male safe space that is the United States, where hurting a white man's feelings is the ultimate crime.

This, in a nutshell, is the story behind the right-wing smear campaign against higher education. As someone who has actually attended a left-leaning university during this so-called "campus free speech crisis," I can confirm that the vast majority of students are not interested in fighting culture wars. Rather, they are focused on getting their degrees, the most popular of which are business administration and nursing, in order to obtain employment. The frontlines of these culture wars are populated almost solely by a minority of entitled, spoiled, identity-politics-obsessed white men desperate to impose white male supremacy on college campuses.

During the 2016 presidential election, I recall a small contingent of white male Trump supporters standing in the middle of campus with signs that read "Homos, Muslims and Jews: Repent or Burn in Hell." The university police not only protected the Trump supporters but also repeatedly threatened to arrest a person holding a "Love Trumps Hate" poster for "disturbing the peace." Indeed, as the narrative of the campus free speech crisis took hold, I witnessed the freedom to voice any criticism of such backwards views become increasingly restricted, by both the police and the university. I saw professors and students remain silent as white male Trump supporters raged about "low-IQ blacks" and "transgender freaks," lest they wanted the Trump supporters to run to the administrators and get them fired/expelled. I also saw two professors get fired for criticizing white supremacy. In fact, a data analysis by Georgetown University found that 75% of professors who are fired or denied promotion for political views are politically left. Thus, contrary to the book's claims, it is left-wing speech, or any speech critical of the far-right, that is under threat on college campuses across the United States.

The book argues that universities churn out a class of left-wing victims who see tyranny and oppression around every corner, while simultaneously painting a hysterical portrait of universities as left-wing tyrannies out to victimize white male conservatives. The fictitious free speech crisis on college campuses is entirely rooted in the right's false sense of victimization. I'm a victim because a black person took the spot to which I felt entitled. I'm a victim because someone criticized my ignorant views. I'm a victim because my professor taught me facts about American history that hurt my feelings. I'm a victim because my lame joke didn't get a laugh. I'm a victim because a woman I violently raped dared to file a report against me. I'm a victim because my perspective, for the first time in my life, isn't always treated as the correct one.

Interestingly, while the book rants and raves endlessly about affirmative action, it never once mentions legacy admissions, in which wealthy white parents bribe universities into admitting their children, an epidemic that has recently been catapulted into the national spotlight. The classism endemic to the right-wing assault on higher education cannot be overlooked.

In sum, the notion that conservative speech is under attack on college campuses is in actuality a sinister right-wing plot to discredit, silence and purge leftist and minority voices on college campuses and transform universities into far-right indoctrination centers where white men comprise 80% of the student body and where ideas questioning the status quo are forbidden. In the name of free speech, the right aims to destroy free speech. ...more

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Oct 22, 2018 Jeanette rated it really liked it

Beyond me to describe this author's experiences and her pure bravery taking on the current "we think" of the title subjects.

How these faculty and supposedly wise elite university administrations and assorted tenured "teachers" prime these people with such ire, mean-spirited and in some cases sadistic self-hate identity issues as core of an education for a "better" life? Beyond despicable!

Her witness and empirical data both are probably the most depressive non-fiction I've read this year. And I ...more

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Mar 13, 2019 Shelly Ibok rated it did not like it

Shelves: libby

I decided to read this book thinking it was going to be an unbiased look at where our country has gone wrong in trying to diversify our schools, workplaces, government, and other areas. What I read instead was an individuals personal perspective, from a pro-Trump, white supremacy view of why they think everyone is trying to take from whites and not have to contribute. In the final chapters she blatantly states that there are no racists professors on college campuses. She also says many times tha ...more

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Sep 03, 2018 Jevprivate rated it did not like it

I will quote a previous review that I thought embodied my thought

"Sometimes hysterical, openly biased, often dripping with scorn and irony, this is a unique take on today's academic system, racial and gender equity."

This book holds so many strawman arguments, you would think this author had already had a conclusion from the outset of doing her research for her book. She seems to pick the most fringe and most unpopular view and claims it as the mainstream of most colleges.

It is really surreal. ...more

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Sep 17, 2018 Gary Moreau rated it liked it · review of another edition

If you are not a fan of political correctness you will love this book. Heather MacDonald takes it all on—full frontal! And she does so with an abundance of research and data that can’t be just swept aside.

Her primary targets are the bastions of secondary education. She writes, “…the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class poli If you are not a fan of political correctness you will love this book. Heather MacDonald takes it all on—full frontal! And she does so with an abundance of research and data that can’t be just swept aside.

Her primary targets are the bastions of secondary education. She writes, “…the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics.”

If you don’t share MacDonald’s conservative politics, and I don’t, some of the book is painful to read. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a point. She does. The irony is that our humanity, which MacDonald claims to be defending, is exactly why we often, as a society, take good intentions too far.

The author spends a lot of ink arguing that the under representation of minority groups at our top universities is a function of skill gaps, not racism, and we do those individuals no favors, she claims, by lowering the bar of admission. But why do those skill gaps exist? On that front, the book is largely silent.

The other irony she does bring to light is the fact that the push for diversity, which I fully support, is often a thinly disguised push for conformity. Gender, racial, and religious diversity is a worthy goal for sure. But if we obtain it by insisting that every member of these underrepresented groups has the same political and worldview, it is not diversity we have achieved.

The result of this insistence on conformity is that every issue becomes a false dilemma fallacy offering only an either/or choice. Every choice is considered either for or against. There is no middle ground, precluding any possibility of productive discussion and debate.

The author’s most unsettling claims is that the humanities (i.e. Shakespeare, Mozart, Plato, etc.) are being suppressed on college campuses today because they were products of the white male patriarchy of their era, suggesting that we are all indelibly defined by the era in which we were born.

Science exists in context. And the liberal arts explore that context. Science without philosophy is empty. Mile markers have meaning only if we have a destination in mind. We may choose to disagree with the great minds of the past, but we shouldn’t ignore them.

In the end, this is a book that should be widely discussed. But it won’t be. The subjects are just too controversial. And that is the real problem here. We need solutions and those are unlikely without meaningful dialogue.

...more

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Dec 19, 2018 Mark Henderson rated it it was ok

An important rebuttal to the Social Justice Warrior hysteria.

My bias: I think racial/gender equality are important. I also think the Left doesn't approach it rationally. I'd put myself on the Left on many social issues, but I do not agree with Leftist politics/strategy.

MacDonald makes some good points, but this book ultimately read like a 300 page rant. In other words, it's preaching to the choir.

What MacDonald got consistently right is that the Left is deeply delusional when they state that a An important rebuttal to the Social Justice Warrior hysteria.

My bias: I think racial/gender equality are important. I also think the Left doesn't approach it rationally. I'd put myself on the Left on many social issues, but I do not agree with Leftist politics/strategy.

MacDonald makes some good points, but this book ultimately read like a 300 page rant. In other words, it's preaching to the choir.

What MacDonald got consistently right is that the Left is deeply delusional when they state that a divergence from 50/50 representation is racism/sexism/etc. What she didn't do is offer any suggestions on what to change socially. Where could this book have gone further?

Employers and universities aren't holding non-white-heterosexual men back. MacDonald is right to point that out consistently. But the early indoctrination of what "desirable" careers for women and men, for example, does play a role. What's missing in this book is an acknowledgment that yes, men and women are different, but a large reason why women don't go into STEM is because we have historically told them not to go into STEM from an early age. This is changing but it's not instantaneous.

In other words, MacDonald rejects Pinker's Blank Slate too much for my taste. We have more autonomy than she suggests.

Similarly, she attributes adolescent males' rabid desire for sex on college campuses to wanting sex. I'm not convinced that social instruction doesn't play a role here. We teach young men to acquire sex whenever they can as a mark of pride. While MacDonald is right that most of these young men don't seek sex as a means of subjugating women (a hyperbolic claim by the Left), she goes too far in dismissing the strong social instruction of patriarchy, especially in males.

Again, this comes down to her outright rejection of Blank Slate. I'm more in the middle: We have autonomy, but of course we have some biological programming as well.

I wouldn't recommend this book to any Leftist social justice warrior looking for an alternate opinion. They'd probably just froth at the mouth. At the same time, there is no material in this book that would encourage the Choir to engage with those types in any sort of empathetic way that would encourage healthy discussion with the delusional Left. What are we left with? A 2 star book. ...more

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Sep 11, 2018 Brian Fiedler rated it it was amazing

Folly and delusion are a common feature in the fall of civilizations. In order to ameliorate the sense of sadness that ensues from reading this book, a learned reader may want to find solace in conjuring historical analogs to this decadence: the Cultural Revolution in China, the subprime mortgage crisis, etc. etc. etc. Things can go bad, very bad, and then sometimes, things get better. When will the decay in higher educations reach its nadir? The book makes no forecast. The book is not for the f ...more

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Nov 25, 2018 Kevin Keating rated it it was amazing

This was a great book. And published in 2018 so current. It really is shocking and disappointing how major colleges (including my own alma mater UCLA) have given over their curriculum to identity politics and given up on western civilization as racist and unworthy of study. She makes a pretty bold point that the lowering of admission standards in order to diversify the student body has hurt the people they are trying to help by not setting them up for success.

It's important to read this well-ci ...more

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Oct 21, 2018 Letitia Todd Kim rated it it was amazing

Eye-opening yet depressing read about the dire state of American universities — particularly the humanities. The classical educational model (which has produced some of our greatest achievements and thinkers) is being tossed out like so much garbage in favor of generating a body of race- and gender-obsessed warriors. Academic standards are lowered in service of this approach; efforts to teach the classical canon are met with screeching hordes of infantile students claiming they will “LIKE, LITER ...more

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Sep 11, 2018 Kyle Grindberg rated it it was amazing

Amazing, wonderful, a breath of fresh air, I'm not sure I'll be able to find enough superlatives to express my enjoyment of this book. My only regret with the work is that while the Western canon of literature is certainly a better foundation than anything anyone's come up within the last 100 years, it's sand compared to the Bible, but the canon is of course downstream from the Biblical headwaters. ...more

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Mar 18, 2019 Gia Marie rated it it was ok

I was disappointed. I do believe one should read works that oppose their views. I read this for class and was throughly intrigued. I am going to point certain points in a straight forward way

-I do believe she made some valid arguments but they were weak in her light citations which made much of her statements seem like assumptions and speculations. She never cited Mary Koch's research and even alters the study's data to prove her point.

-Many reviews claimed she didn't do politically correctionne I was disappointed. I do believe one should read works that oppose their views. I read this for class and was throughly intrigued. I am going to point certain points in a straight forward way

-I do believe she made some valid arguments but they were weak in her light citations which made much of her statements seem like assumptions and speculations. She never cited Mary Koch's research and even alters the study's data to prove her point.

-Many reviews claimed she didn't do politically correctionness but what I got was a lot of condescending language and ridicule. Her use of quotations on certain words was useful in portraying how she doesn't take that word seriously.

-Her use of statements in parenthesis was weird and unnecessary. I have never seen this before. Also whoever edited the copy of her book I bought needs to be fired. The countless misspellings, symbols typed into the words, etc. Like, was Heather was in a rush typing and no one cared to clean it up.

-When discussing race and admissions, I do appreciate her calling out affirmative action and the silence of folks she interviewed. But she also likes to ask why certain groups can't just act like Asians. She was stereotyping an entire race that is made of mutiple ethnicities, even Chinese people, whom she loved referencing, have different ethnicities. I'm glad one of her interviewees called her for it but she completely missed point.

-Gender was disappointing. It seemed like a big rant. I appreciate her discussing false cases because they do exist, but why not talk about cases that were proven true but the universitie did nothing. She solely stays talking about women, rape culture, and how fake it is. She says that if someone was actually raped, they would feel it is important to report it but damn all the research that states most rapes go unreported. I do agree that we need to be careful with victim-favoring but blaming the victims doesn't help either. She offers no solutions that didn't require some form of ridicule.

-She provided a whole chapter about a business which could've been a few paragraphs. I appreciate this new knowledge of programs but it felt like somebody was getting paid.

-I really do appreciate her love for the classics but this is an argument in education currently . Though I do think we should learn about Shakespeare, and Milton. I think we can also learn from other sources and cultures. She says we shouldn't be so critical about things we know nothing about but we've been exposed to many of these authors prior to college. Part of learning is being critical. You cannot grow agreeing with everything because someone else says it is.

Honestly, I believe her work could've been stronger. And I think it's comical that she says universities are pandering to their students, which in some cases is true, but she is doing it herself. This is first book I've read and I look forward to see her further discussions. ...more

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Sep 10, 2018 Ronald J. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A good look at how the belief in diversity is not what it purports to be, especially on campuses and inside organizations. Students equate nonconforming ideas with hate speech. Safe spaces imply that some places on college aren’t safe. This is soft totalitarianism. Mac Donald places a lot of the blame on faculty and administrators on campuses. When speakers need police escort on and off campuses, alarm bell should be going off. If the right blocked Elizabeth Warren from speaking on campus, they’ A good look at how the belief in diversity is not what it purports to be, especially on campuses and inside organizations. Students equate nonconforming ideas with hate speech. Safe spaces imply that some places on college aren’t safe. This is soft totalitarianism. Mac Donald places a lot of the blame on faculty and administrators on campuses. When speakers need police escort on and off campuses, alarm bell should be going off. If the right blocked Elizabeth Warren from speaking on campus, they’d be labeled fascists. Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, and Jonathan Haidt of NYU, take the activists’ claims of psychological injury at face value, and propose cognitive behavioral therapy to preserve mental health in the face of differing opinions. But campus intolerance is at root not a psychological phenomenon, but an ideological one.
Google, is supposedly based on “science-based thinking,” but it makes universities look like an open marketplace of ideas. Mentioning, let alone researching, sex differences has become verboten. Affirmative action has had a host of unintended consequences: mismatching of students to institution, stigmatization of students, etc. Asians, of course, are not considered persons of color, for reasons no one can explain. All the over-paid diversity officers in colleges won’t have an effect on inadequate academic skills being taught in high schools. She also debunks “implicit bias,” which started in 1998 with the Implicit Association Test, and has spawned a multimillion-dollar consulting industry. Yet this test doesn’t pass the reliability and validity hallmarks of real science. Are we to believe that companies today still discriminate against minorities if a qualified candidate appears? Implicit bias has been conjured up as identifying real victims of discrimination has become harder and harder. She takes on the campus rape movement (one-in-five or -four statistic is pure bunk). To the extent that sexual incidents have increased, feminists can only blame themselves, since they are the ones that believe there are no differences between men and women. And alcohol does not absolve women of responsibility; but if it does, it turns men into guardians of female well-being. Regret doesn’t equal rape. As she says, “Guys who push themselves on women at keggers are after one thing only, and it’s not a reinstatement of the patriarchy.” There’s a good discussion at the end on the purpose of universities: knowledge. Have they abdicated their purpose? Read the book and draw your own conclusion.
...more

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Feb 22, 2019 Tom A rated it it was amazing

I have taught in universities since 1987. First as a PhD student at a large flagship state school, then at a premier HBCU while finishing my PhD, then at a small campus of the SUNY system (tenured), and now as an associate professor at another campus of a state-affiliated system. What is in her book is true. Period.

Experiences vary at different schools, and at different departments within schools. If you're teaching at a smaller state school you won't see as much of the worst of what's described I have taught in universities since 1987. First as a PhD student at a large flagship state school, then at a premier HBCU while finishing my PhD, then at a small campus of the SUNY system (tenured), and now as an associate professor at another campus of a state-affiliated system. What is in her book is true. Period.

Experiences vary at different schools, and at different departments within schools. If you're teaching at a smaller state school you won't see as much of the worst of what's described here. The lunatic left often hasn't completely taken over the asylum yet, and the students by and large come from working class families, and are honestly trying to get ahead in life. You'll still see the various "initiatives" and pressures brought to bear on non-conforming speech and attitudes, but the most egregious offenders are often concentrated in given departments. Thankfully I'm tenured, and work in a department with generally open-minded people. I know people at "the other end of the building" who live in terror of being fired or not promoted because of their political views.

At "elite" (read: expensive) private schools with a heavy liberal arts focus, the problem is worse. At some of the major campuses in regions suffering mass psychosis (parts of CA, MA, NY, etc.) it's even worse.

My own smallish campus is a victim of the "diversity push". Students who quite frankly don't have the academic background to succeed are brought in because they add to "diversity". In my classes, one of three outcomes is likely: (1) they will struggle with the material, not pass, and rack up thousands in debt, and end up failing out and perhaps discouraged from trying again; (2) I lower expectations and the level of instruction to accommodate them, lowering the standards of the school and the level of instruction provided to students who are actually qualified, or (3) I give them a passing grade anyway. They then go out into the labor market and show that they don't know what they're expected to know, which ends up causing people to make unfortunate generalizations.

...more

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Jan 18, 2019 Adrienne rated it did not like it

what a trash book written by a trash person. white people and white women need to stop with their feigned victimization and white tears and stop upholding white supremacy.

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Jan 15, 2019 Cav rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology, sociology, religion, culture, politics

This was great. Heather MacDonald provides a data-driven thorough dismantling of the PC idiocy that has taken over much of academia, pop culture, and silicone valley.
She starts with "The Hysterical Campus", and continues along with affirmative action, microaggressions, unconscious bias, the disparity in academic performance between the races, feminism, and the #MeToo movement, among others.
This book reads as a work of fiction. In that; if you gave it to someone unfamiliar with the current social ...more

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Jan 19, 2019 Alan rated it really liked it

A gut punch of reality. It’s hard to not get frustrated reading of what has happened to our education system. The author discusses diversity indoctrination and numerous agendas at work to control the universities. To me, her examples of actual events highlight the hypocrisy of the Diversity cabal and their attempts to rewrite history and culture.

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Jul 14, 2019 Carolyn Kost rated it it was amazing

Shelves: education

This is an essential read about the new religion that has taken hold of our society: diversity ideology. Regardless of how assiduously one may read The Chronicle of Higher Education, some of this material will be new since MacDonald is drawing on extensive resource from various sources as well as her own experience. Critical race and gender theory have become orthodoxy and any heretic who dares challenge any of its tenets will not pilloried.

MacDonald divides the book in four sections: Race, Gend This is an essential read about the new religion that has taken hold of our society: diversity ideology. Regardless of how assiduously one may read The Chronicle of Higher Education, some of this material will be new since MacDonald is drawing on extensive resource from various sources as well as her own experience. Critical race and gender theory have become orthodoxy and any heretic who dares challenge any of its tenets will not pilloried.

MacDonald divides the book in four sections: Race, Gender, The Bureaucracy, and The Purpose of the University. Despite the lowered standards and the billion dollar industry devoted to making academe and various industries --especially the supposedly lucrative STEM fields-- more welcoming and equalizing access, women and Blacks claim victimhood and demand equality of outcomes and representation. MacDonald proves in case after case that lowering the bar to access for Blacks has not resulted in increased representation because entrants are simply not prepared for the work.

The gender section needed a bit more care. MacDonald lumps all feminists in one group, when we are most certainly not monolithic. Feminists of my age and Camille Paglia and former Barnard president Deborah Spar know that women have to take responsibility for ourselves and abhor this embracing of victimhood by young women who don't seem to comprehend the biological differences between women and men. No, you can't expect to drink to excess and go to a male's room and be absolutely safe from any harm. Moreover, sexual dynamics are not all about power, they can be about sex. However, for MacDonald to state, "No woman who has actually been raped would think that the rape was not serious enough to report," is simply inaccurate and ignores the research.

In the third section on The Bureaucracy, we see how the organizational frameworks of in academe and corporations like Google are supporting the diversocracy without sufficient thought as to why. "The more resources that US companies spend on engineering diversity while global competing firms base themselves on meritocracy, the more we blunt our scientific edge." To say that we need diversity is to ignore the discoveries that were made over the course of millennia by non-diverse scientists, most of whom were wealthy enough to have the leisure time to devote to experimentation.

After piling on outrage after outrage, we arrive at the final section duly horrified. MacDonald doesn't exactly proffer hope, but at least provides a mollifying voice of reason by affirming the purpose of the university (and education) as the transmission of knowledge, not merely the deconstructionist postmodern methodology of gender, race and class analysis. Rather than the classical humanities, "the characteristic academic traits of our time: narcissism, an obsession with victimhood, and a relentless determination to reduce the stunning complexity of the past to the shallow categories of identity and class politics. Sitting atop an entire civilization of aesthetic wonders, the contemporary academic wants only to study oppression, preferably his own, defined reductively according to gonads and melanin."

Speaking as one who was steeped in, later taught this stuff for nearly a decade, then recanted, I can attest to the truth here. It really is as bad as she presents it and worse. Logic and reason are presented as tools of the oppressor. We must stop this nonsense before we hurtle headlong into another Dark Age.

Read this book. ...more

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Sep 26, 2018 David Lubin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Heather MacDonald has written a great book. It is difficult to read for a man of my age (64) because the state of education today is a sorry substitute for the education that I was able to enjoy. The book is a sobering reminder that we are in for a very rough ride in the future.

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Nov 24, 2018 Peter rated it it was amazing

What are we to make of today’s university culture where students may not be subjected to spoken or written words that make them feel uncomfortable, where diversity is achieved by abolishing objective standards not just in the social sciences but in the STEM fields as well, and where the diversity bureaucracy is actively undermining the centuries-old mission of higher education. That is a big subject, but in The Diversity Delusion Heather Mac Donald breaks it down into its constituent parts and e ...more

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Aug 27, 2019 Sebastian Gebski rated it it was amazing

First - the disclaimers:

I am up for equal treatment & equal opportunities for all the people - regardless of their origin, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. I have got plenty of friends who come from different cultures, background, geographies - neither of "options" here was never an issue. The same applies to my professional contacts & relationships. Yes, all people are different - in particular: have different level of competency or potential BUT these differences are not determ First - the disclaimers:

I am up for equal treatment & equal opportunities for all the people - regardless of their origin, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. I have got plenty of friends who come from different cultures, background, geographies - neither of "options" here was never an issue. The same applies to my professional contacts & relationships. Yes, all people are different - in particular: have different level of competency or potential BUT these differences are not determined by their race, gender, etc. In addition - I do have a daughter which I'd wish will be able to do whatever what she wants in future - in my opinion all the paths should be open for her with the same entry criteria other people face and will be facing.

Nevertheless, I think that America has went bananas. From one extreme (of slavery and racial inequalities decades ago) to another one (where words like "racist" or "white supremacist" are the most powerful weapons on the surface of the planet - because they stick like glue, without any chance for substantive discussion). And that's why I've decided to read this book (regardless of all the public accusation of Mac Donald being a nazi, fascist, etc.).

To cut the long story short - I agree with 90-95% of what's written there. The remaining part is either statistics I can't/don't have time to validate or statements that are too "technocratic" (in other words: ones that ignore more social/psychological aspects of the topic) - e.g. HMD several times states that how is it possible to feel uncomfortable/threatened in Yale/Harvard where it's a privilege to learn in - apparently she doesn't understand that the social exclusion can make you (potentially) feel unwanted & paranoid even in paradise.

Anyway:
* 1st part (about the race) is VERY good - I think it perfectly pinpoints the hysteria & massive delusion of "microaggressions"; I can't even state how ridiculous some of quoted cases are
* 2nd part (about gender) is more tricky - I agree with a lot of rhetoric, but I don't have data to refer to numbers and statistics
* parts 3 & 4 can IMHO be treated together - what has resonated most with me was the aspect of cultural heritage - surprisingly HMD becomes less "substantial" here, she pivots and refers more to reader's feelings & sentiments - nevertheless I agree, but I can imagine that there are people who do have different prime principles in their lives

What is worth emphasizing, HMD is very respectful & tactful across the whole book - she doesn't insult/belittle/ridicule the opponents. Yes, there's some irony here & there, but it doesn't cross the delicate border.

IMHO the topic of this book is one of the most important & relevant ones in 2019 - everyone should read this book & make her/his mind on what to do with it (yes, I respect ones that disagree with it too).

P.S. I've edited the review to fix all the typos - that's what happens if you try to type something fast on your mobile :) ...more

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Jul 23, 2019 Vagabond of Letters, DLitt rated it liked it

7/10

Specious environmental reasoning regarding the 'academic achievement gap' between ethnic groups (disregarding group mean differences and the heritability of g), which the author believes can be rectified by intense early childhood intervention for the 'underrepresented minorities' (viz. Asians and Jews are overrepresented) (p 198) and similar small gaffes throughout mar an otherwise very good overview of the subjects of SJWism (the triumvirate of race, feminism, gender identity metamorphosed ...more

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Nov 19, 2018 SusanwithaGoodBook rated it really liked it

I don't think I've ever highlighted as many passages in a book as I have this one. If it does nothing else, this book makes you think about the direction of our college campuses and our society in general. The most concerning part is the attack on free speech. Particularly on campuses where free thought and considering other people's true position in a reasonable discussion should be the goal, instead we see an attack on thought and discussion and a complete shut-down of any type of non-pc thoug ...more

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Sep 18, 2018 Stephen J. Kohn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a delight —Sort of

The book is a delight as is all that MacDonald writes. The reservation is the content. To read what is happening in the US (as an ex-pat for 27 years) is dispiriting. It is worth the wait as is awaiting her next article or book.

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Oct 27, 2018 ♠ TABI⁷ ♠ marked it as to-read

Shelves: non-fic

idk I just like reading controversial things

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Nov 22, 2018 Damien Leri rated it it was amazing

A well researched survey of these timely issues written in her penetrating and accessible prose.

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Jul 17, 2020 Ben rated it really liked it

Shelves: culture-society

If there's one person who can give Donald Trump a run for the most triggerings generated, it's surely Heather Mac Donald. Indeed, that is how The Diversity Delusion begins, with Mac Donald recounting her experiences being confronted and harrassed on college campuses by students and faculty incensed by her opinions.

Mac Donald, previously the author of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, has long been a thorn in the side of the grievance industry, that se ...more

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Feb 01, 2019 Bonnie Palmer rated it it was amazing

This is essential reading for any parent of a teen on the cusp of choosing a college and/or career path. The author is thorough but never dry or humorless. I really enjoyed her presentation. Our founding fathers had much to say on the matter of education and the survival of our founding principles, and thus the survival of our constitutional republic. I like this quote: "It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowled ...more

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Oct 20, 2018 Linda rated it it was amazing

The lawsuit accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian Americans made me curious about affirmative action and race-based preferences in academia and hiring. I always felt it was unfair, but couldn't quantify my feelings. Diversity initiatives are expensive and unnecessary bureaucracies in schools and workplaces. Evidence and facts trumps emotions people may have on this subject. I highly recommend Ms. Heather Mac Donald's book to better understand how these programs don't work.

https://cato ...more

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About Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald

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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has covered a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has covered a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald's newest book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (2018), argues that toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture.

Mac Donald’s The War on Cops (2016), a New York Times bestseller, warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. Other previous works include The Burden of Bad Ideas (2001), a collection of Mac Donald’s City Journal essays, details the effects of the 1960s counterculture’s destructive march through America’s institutions. In The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s (2007), coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, she chronicles the effects of broken immigration laws and proposes a practical solution to securing the country’s porous borders. In Are Cops Racist? (2010), another City Journal anthology, Mac Donald investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over so-called racial profiling, and the anti-profiling lobby’s harmful effects on black Americans.

A nonpracticing lawyer, Mac Donald clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has frequently testified before U.S. House and Senate Committees. In 1998, Mac Donald was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York.

A frequent guest on Fox News and other TV and radio programs, Mac Donald holds a B.A. in English from Yale University, graduating with a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge University, where she earned an M.A. in English and studied in Italy through a Clare College study grant. She holds a J.D. from Stanford University Law School.

At the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation's 2018 annual meeting in downtown Los Angeles, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called Mac Donald, “the greatest thinker on criminal justice in America today.” ...more

Books by Heather Mac Donald

The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe

The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society

The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today's

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“The academic obsession with identity is ironic, since its roots lie in a philosophy that denied the very existence of the self. In the 1970s, the literary theory of deconstruction took over humanities departments with a curious set of propositions about language. Because linguistic signs were arbitrary, successful communication was said to be impossible. Most surprisingly, the human subject was declared to be a fiction, a mere play of rhetorical tropes. In the 1980s, however, the self came roaring back with a vengeance as feminists and race theorists took the mannered jargon of deconstruction and turned it into a political weapon. The key deconstructive concept of linguistic “différance” became identity difference between the oppressed and their oppressors; the prime object of study became one’s own self and its victimization” — 3 likes

“Diversity” in the academy purported to be about bridge-building and broadening people’s experiences. It has had the opposite effect: dividing society, reducing learning, and creating an oppositional mind-set that prevents individuals from seizing the opportunities available to them. It is humanistic learning, by contrast, that involves an actual encounter with diversity and difference, as students enter worlds radically different from their own. Humanistic study involves imaginative empathy and curiosity, which are being squelched in today’s university in favor of self-engrossed complaint. Teaching the classics is the duty we owe these great works for giving us an experience of the sublime. Once we stop lovingly transmitting them to the next generation, they die. For decades, universities have drifted further and further away from their true purpose. Now they are taking the rest of the world with them.” — 2 likes

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