Empty Words: The Hypocrisy of ‘Diversity’

In yet another example of the tension between “intellectual diversity” and “universal inclusion,” Cornell is currently atwitter over some controversial behavior by the Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship. Last week, news spread that Chi Alpha had asked one of its student leaders to step down because of his sexual orientation. The student had apparently succumbed to his homosexual urges and elected to live in sin with his boyfriend. Jesus would not approve.

Cornellians have since come out in droves against Chi Alpha. At a Student Assembly meeting last Thursday, everyone from Chris Basil ’10 to Dean of Students Kent Hubbell ’67 spoke out against the Christian group, claiming that rights had been violated and homophobia essentially endorsed by an SAFC-sponsored organization.

Reasonable people would agree that Chi Alpha’s prejudicial philosophy is ill-founded. Discrimination against anyone based on such factors as race, gender or sexual orientation has no place on our campus, and the S.A. is right to challenge such discrimination in an open forum.

Reasonable people would also agree that Chi Alpha’s behavior should come as no surprise. The group bases its mission, at least in part, on the fundamental teachings of the Old Testament, in which homosexuality is famously described as “an abomination to the Lord our God.” With beliefs like that, it’s no wonder the Christian fellowship would chafe at keeping a gay student in a position of organizational leadership. (Sidenote: It’s still unclear why Christian groups like Chi Alpha subscribe to such Old Testament teachings as “Thou shalt not be gay” while ostensibly ignoring such other prescriptions as “Thou shalt slaughter ye a goat every weekday morning to appease the Lord.” Yeah. It’s in there.)

The fact that students like Basil and administrators like Hubbell have only just come out against groups like Chi Alpha underscores a disturbing degree of intellectual dishonesty at our University. Cornell constantly promotes the concept of diversity on this campus, encouraging the formation of groups with a wide range of perspectives and demographic makeups. For the most part, the Big Red is content to let these groups be, ignoring the fact that a diversity of opinion will inevitably mean the espousal of beliefs that contradict the official University rhetoric. Yet when groups like Chi Alpha act on these beliefs, indignant students and administrators react as if they never expected an organizational creed to be applied in the real world.

In spite of what they say, then, Cornellians seem deeply ambivalent about on-campus diversity. On the one hand, Cornellians want to be challenged by a diverse set of perspectives, especially those that directly contradict their deep-seated beliefs and preconceptions. On the other hand, they don’t really want to hear bigotry, racism or any number of other odious perspectives in their four years on campus.

The controversy surrounding Chi Alpha is starkly reminiscent of a somewhat similar controversy that began last semester, over a few choice statements made by a columnist in The Cornell Review. People started protesting after a writer described black and latino students (among others) as “angry minorities” in an early-semester edition of the conservative newspaper. The S.A. decided to vote on a resolution that would have taken the “Cornell” name away from the Review. The Sun editorial board, of which I was then a member, argued that such action would trample on the right to free speech within a university forum. By allowing the Review to use its name, the Big Red was not endorsing the newspaper’s point of view, but merely encouraging the free expression of ideas in an intellectual marketplace.

Of course, the two situations are not entirely analogous. Beyond the bigotry that it decided to publish, The Review never practically discriminated against Cornell students. Conversely, Chi Alpha took direct discriminatory action against a member of its organization and of the Cornell community.

Both controversies, however, have put Cornell in much the same position. Our commitment to diversity has once again been pitted against our moral and ethical fibers, our intellectual interest in vibrant debate thrown into conflict with our desire to quell hatred and bigotry in our community.

Some might argue that Chi Alpha’s actions have crossed the line separating constructive debate and full-blown harassment. Saying you believe something is one thing, but acting on that belief is an entirely different story.

This argument misses the point that Cornell endorses groups like Chi Alpha knowing full well the discriminatory tenets on which they are founded. Cornell funded Chi Alpha with the understanding that the group would base its organizational conduct on the Bible, a document which explicitly calls homosexuality an “abomination.” It is unfair, and even hypocritical, for Cornell to approve funding for a group that bases its mission on specific teachings, and then castigate that group for upholding those teachings in practice.

Sadly, the alternative is equally disconcerting — funding only those groups whose mission statements do not portend discriminatory behavior. Such a policy would effectively eliminate all fundamentalist and orthodox religious groups from campus, including, among others, those Jewish groups which do not allow women to lead prayer services or serve in positions of rabbinic leadership.

Cornell cannot tolerate discrimination like the kind exhibited by Chi Alpha this past December. But Cornellians also cannot ignore their own complicity in such discrimination. Cornell students and administrators have long convinced themselves that “diversity” is synonymous with “integration,” when in fact the promotion of intellectual diversity will necessarily spawn viewpoints that are markedly discriminatory. Cornell has created an impossibly difficult situation for groups like Chi Alpha, which are encouraged to hold a diverse set of religious beliefs but expected to conduct themselves in a way that runs counter to those beliefs. Chi Alpha’s behavior was wrong, but it is also symptomatic of a bigger problem, namely, that Cornell continues to struggle with whether it really does want a truly diverse campus environment.

After spending the better part of a week being angry at the Christian fellowship, perhaps it is time for student leaders like Basil and administrators like Hubbell to ask themselves if they have been honest about their relish for on-campus diversity. With the semester winding down, the S.A. might well resolve to consider the meaning of a term it uses with such conviction.