The coalition for diversity whose diversity did diversity just win?

Non-Democrats are more likely to count other forms of diversity for more than the Democrats do.  I see Democrats as somewhat concentrated in particular cities and also in particular occupations, more than Republicans are.  There is nothing wrong with that, but it is another way in which Democrats are less diverse.

.. Correctly or not, many Americans do not think racial and ethnic diversity is the diversity that should command so much attention.  That is one place to start for understanding why so many 2012 Obama voters switched to Trump this time around, or maybe just stayed home.

Peter Thiel: If You Don’t Conform, They Don’t Count You as Diverse

“The Advocate, a magazine that once raised me as a gay innovator, even published an article saying as of now I am, and I quote, ‘not a gay man’ because I don’t agree with their politics,” he announced. “The lie behind the buzzword of diversity could not be made more clear. If you don’t conform, then you don’t count as diverse. No matter what your personal background.”

.. Moving on with examples, Thiel stated that “free trade has not worked out well for all of America.”

“All of our elites preach free trade. Highly educated people that make public policy preach that cheap imports make everyone a winner, according to economic theory. But in actual practice, we’ve lost tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs to foreign trade,” he declared. “The heartland has been devastated. Maybe policy-makers really believe that nobody loses, or maybe they don’t worry about it too much because they think they’re among the winners.”

.. “The sheer size of the US trade deficit shows that something has gone badly wrong. The most developed country in the world should be exporting capital to the less developed countries,” Thiel claimed. “Instead the United States is importing more than 500 billion dollars every year. That money flows into financial assets and distorts our economy in favor of more financialization, and it gives the well connected people, who benefit, a reason to defend the status quo.”

“But not everyone benefits and the Trump voters know it,” he concluded.

Why College Rankings Are a Joke

The rankings nourish the myth that the richest, most selective colleges have some corner on superior education; don’t adequately recognize public institutions that prioritize access and affordability; and do insufficient justice to the particular virtues of individual campuses.

.. He said that he’d never trade his faculty position here for one elsewhere, though he has been wooed, because of U.M.B.C.’s almost unrivaled record for guiding African-American undergraduates toward doctorates and other postgraduate degrees in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math).

.. Diversity, socioeconomic or otherwise, doesn’t factor much into U.S. News rankings, though a broadening of perspectives lies at the heart of the best education. U.M.B.C., with its acceptance rate of nearly 60 percent, places 159th among national universities.

.. One of the main factors in a school’s rank is how highly officials at peer institutions and secondary-school guidance counselors esteem it. But they may not know it well. They’re going by its reputation, established in no small part by previous U.S. News evaluations. A lofty rank perpetuates itself.

Inside The Head Of Trump Voters

If you look back far enough in humankind’s history, you will observe that you don’t see civilizations starting without their building temples first. Haidt, who is a secular liberal, is not making a theistic point, not really. He’s saying that the work of civilization can only be accomplished when a people binds itself together around a shared sense of the sacred. It’s what makes a people a people, and a civilization a civilization. “It doesn’t have to be a god,” says Haidt. Anything that we hold sacred, and hold it together, is enough.

.. But then he tells them that if they believe that they could treat without bias a patient who is an open Trump supporter, they’re lying to themselves. In the America of 2016, political bias is the most powerful bias of all — more polarizing by far than race, even.

.. Haidt makes a point of saying that it’s simply wrong to call Trump a fascist. He’s too individualistic for that. He’s an authoritarian, but that is not a synonym for fascist, no matter how much the Left wants to say it is.

.. He says that in his work as an academic and social psychologist, he sees colleagues constantly demonizing and mocking conservatives. He warns them to knock it off. “We need political diversity,” he says. And: “They are members of our community.”

The discourse and behavior of the Left, says Haidt, is alienating millions of ordinary people all over the West. It’s not just America. We are sliding towards authoritarianism all over the West, and there’s really only one way to stop it.

.. At the 41:37 point in the talk, Haidt says that we can reduce intolerance and defuse the conflict by focusing on sameness. We need unifying rituals, beliefs, institutions, and practices, he says, drawing on Stenner’s research. The romance the Left has long had with multiculturalism and diversity (as the Left defines it) has to end, because it’s helping tear us apart.

This fall, the Democrats are taking Stenner’s advice brilliantly, says Haidt, referring to the convention the Dems just put on, and Hillary’s speech about how we’re all better off standing together. Haidt says this is actually good advice, period. “It’s not just propaganda you wheel out at election time,” he says. If we don’t have a feasible conservative party, we open the way for authoritarianism.

.. Haidt says we don’t need “equality” — that is, an equal number of conservatives and liberals in the academy. We just need to have diversity enough for people to be challenged in their viewpoints, so an academic community can flourish according to its nature.

.. I don’t think the center can hold anymore. It’s too late. The cultural left in this country is very authoritarian, at least as regards orthodox Christians and other social conservatives.

.. We are the people who defile what they consider most sacred: sexual liberty, including abortion rights and gay rights. The liberals in control now (as distinct from all liberals, let me be clear) have made it clear that they will not compromise with what they consider to be evil. We are the Klan to them. Error has no rights in this world they’re building.

.. all I want for my tribe is to be left alone. But the crusading Left won’t let that happen anymore. They don’t even want the Mormons to be allowed to play football foe the Big 12, for heaven’s sake.