Thought Reform 101

The Orwellian implications of today's college orientation.

Alan Charles Kors from the March 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 5)

Sharon Ulmar, assistant to the chancellor for diversity and equal opportunity at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, handed out a flyer titled "Can [A] Diversity Program Create Behavior Changes?" Her program's mode of self-evaluation was to measure "the number of participants that took action based upon the awareness they learned from [the] program." Among the units of "awareness" successfully acquired were the following (some of which surely might strike one as more problematic than others): "gays and lesbians no different than [sic] others"; "handicap accessibility is for those who are handicaped [sic]"; "difficult to make a decision about own beliefs when others are watching"; "module allowed participant to witness subtle behaviors instead of hearing about it"; and the ineffably tautological "understanding commonalities of each individual may be similar to yours."

Denise Bynes, program coordinator for Adelphi University's Center for African-American Studies Programs, distributed a "Conflict Resolution Styles Questionnaire" for students, all of whom are to be categorized at the end as one of the following: "competing, avoiding, accommodating, compromising, and collaborating." The handout also presents the "basic values" of each American ethnic group. For white Americans, these are "Freedom/liberty/privacy; equality/fairness; achievement/success; individualism/self-interest; economical use of time; comfort." For African-Americans, "Ethnic pride, heritage, history; kinship bonds/family/motherhood; equality/fairness; achievement; respect; religion/spirituality." For Asian-Americans, "Reciprocal social duties; self-control/courtesy/dignity; devotion to parents; tradition (family, culture, the past); duty/hard work/diligence." Each group also has its own particular "overview" of nature, logic, time, society, and interpersonal relationships. Whites wish to "control" nature, for example; Hispanics, to live in "harmony" with it; blacks, to "overcome" it; and Asians, to "be adjusted to" and "accept" it. Whites are "rational, logical, analytical"; Hispanics, "rational, ethical"; blacks, "allegorical and synthetical"; and Asians, "intuitive, holistic, tolerate inconsistencies."

According to a formal presentation by Bynes and her colleague at Adelphi, Hinda Adele Barlaz, all of these materials were acquired during "training" by the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service, a program so effective that "it was very hard to get any of the other white members of the committee [Barlaz was white] to go for the training that the Department of Justice provided free of charge. The white members of the [Adelphi Prejudice Reduction] Committee had been so alienated by the training that they didn't want to go back."

What do these presenters in Nebraska, typical of those now governing offices of student life and residence, believe about the re-education of our college students? The keynote speaker at the conference was Carlos Muñoz, professor of ethnic studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He explains in an interview that to create an appropriate environment on campus, one has "to do as much outreach as possible away from the classroom, into the dorms, into the places where students live." Such work should begin during freshman orientation, continue throughout a college experience, and be mandatory.

Amirall-Padamsee from Syracuse argues that "students of color need to be nurtured as insightful leaders of our community" and that "they must be formally trained in anti-oppression theory and related skill building." "White students," in turn, "have to be trained as allies in change." (Ally is a code word in sensitivity training circles. As the "diversity facilitator" Hugh Vasquez of the Todos Institute explains in a widely used manual, an "ally" is someone from "the dominant group" who is aware of and articulates his unmerited privilege and who intervenes on behalf of mistreated groups.)

The goal of such training, according to Amirall-Padamsee, is "to produce graduates who are individuals committed to educational and social justice, and not just a tolerance of, but a validating of difference." To accomplish that she says, "we need to define and implement ways to translate education to behavioral change." In addition, she boasts, she has access to federal work-study funds, and she uses that position--and her capacity to dismiss people-- "to try to make a positive change in the way that the student is thinking."

Tovar, formerly of Oklahoma State University and now at the University of Oklahoma, declares in an interview at the conference that "at OSU we have all kinds of sensitivity training." She describes an incident involving fraternity brothers who had been disrespectful of Native American culture: They ended up "incredibly emotional....These fraternity kids broke down." OSU also has mandatory multicultural freshman orientation sessions.

Bynes, also the co-chairman of the Prejudice Reduction Committee at Adelphi University, says the committee's emphasis is on training individuals how to interact "with a diverse student body," with "separate training for students...[and] special sessions on student leadership training." This "cultural and racial awareness training would benefit all members of the Adelphi community, both in their university and personal lives." The committee would get people to talk about "`what I like about being so-and-so,' `what I dislike about being so-and-so,' and `the first time I encountered prejudice,'" all exercises that the facilitators had been shown and had experienced in their own "training" by the Justice Department.

Bynes is a kind, accomplished, candid, and well-meaning woman. As she explains, "White people must have...sensitivity training...so that they can become aware of white privilege." Mandatory sensitivity training ideally should include both students and faculty, but "there are things that we can't dictate to the faculty because of the fact that they have a union."

There are painful ironies in these attempts at thought reform. Individual identity lies at the heart of both dignity and the flourishing of an ethnically heterogeneous society. Black students on American campuses rightly decry any tendency of university police to stop students based on race. Their objections are not statistical but moral: One is an individual, not an instance of blood or appearance. The assault on individual identity was essential to the horror and inhumanity of Jim Crow laws, of apartheid, and of the Nuremberg Race Laws. It is no less inhuman when undertaken by "diversity educators."

From the Inquisition to the political use of Soviet psychiatry, history has taught us to recoil morally from the violation of the ultimate refuges of self-consciousness, conscience, and private beliefs. The song of the "peat bog soldiers," sent by the Nazis to work until they died, was "Die Gedanken sind frei," "Thoughts Are Free," for that truly is the final atom of human liberty. No decent society or person should pursue another human being there. Our colleges and universities do so routinely.

The desire to "train" individuals on issues of race and diversity has spawned a new industry of moral re-education. Colleges and universities have been hiring diversity "trainers" or "facilitators" for 15 years, and the most famous of them can command $35,000 for "cultural audits," $5,000 for sensitivity workshop training, and a sliding scale of honoraria, some for not less than $3,000 per hour, for lectures.

This growing industry has its mountebanks, its careerists, its well-meaning zealots, and its sadists. The categories often blur. Three of the most celebrated facilitators at the moment are Edwin J. Nichols, of Nichols and Associates in Washington, D.C.; Hugh Vasquez, of the Todos Institute in Oakland, California; and Jane Elliott, the Torquemada of thought reform. To examine their work is to see into the heart of American re-education.

Nichols first came to the attention of critics of intrusive political correctness in 1990, when he led an infamous "racial sensitivity" session at the University College of the University of Cincinnati. According to witnesses, his exercise culminated in the humiliation of a blond, blue-eyed, young female professor, whom he ridiculed as a "perfect" member of "the privileged white elite" who not only would win "a beauty contest" but even "wore her string of pearls." The woman, according to these accounts, sat and sobbed. These contemporaneous revelations did not harm Nichols' career.

According to the curriculum vitae sent by his firm, Nichols studied at Eberhardt-Karls Universität in Tubingen, Germany, and at Leopold-Franzens Universität in Innsbruck, Austria, "where he received his Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology and Psychiatry, cum laude" (a rare degree). In some publicity material, he states that he founded a school of child psychology in Africa; at other times, he modestly withholds that accomplishment.