Free Republic

A new buzzword has entered the lexicon of academic fashion in the USA, threatening to drown poor professors like me in yet another wave of coy euphemism. The term is 'cultural competence'. Like its predecessors 'affirmative action,' 'diversity,' and 'multiculturalism', it attempts to cloak problematical and even disturbing policy initiatives in linguistic vestments that suggest that no right-minded person could possibly demur. A 'culturally competent' academic, one might naively surmise, would be one who has absorbed and is able to propound some of the deep values - ethical, aesthetic or epistemological - that embody the stellar achievements of Western culture,...

PORTLAND — An early draft of a five-year "diversity plan" for the University of Oregon has drawn a firestorm of criticism from faculty, prompting administrators to distance themselves from the proposal. The draft plan, billed as a "long-term vision for diversity," called for the university to hire up to 40 faculty members by 2012 to teach courses in a "cluster" of diversity-related topics, including race, gender, gay and disability studies. Under the plan, academic departments that hew closely to the university's diversity goals when hiring would be given "priority in the funding of new positions." The plan also would mandate...