National Security Threatened by Devotion to Diversity

Ashley Thorne

We know the diversity doctrine harms the quality of higher education, but did you know that it threatens our national security? So asks NAS member George Seaver, a former Teaching Fellow and postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

In an article in Commentary Magazine, Seaver shows how the military, the FBI, the CIA, and the Office of National Intelligence have each adopted “diversity” policies, to their detriment. Performance suffered at the FBI in the since Louis Freeh, director from 1993-2001, made it his agenda to “diversify the agent force.” Seaver notes a Wall Street Journal editorial that attributes the “main cause of inadequate intelligence performance over the past three decades” to “a decline in the quality of personnel, brought about by pressures for diversity.” 

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, instead of mitigating enthusiasm for diversity, increased it. Fearing that they would be profiled for profiling, security offices made things easier for future attackers, opening the U.S. to more terrorism. Al Qaeda members are at ease in the U.S. knowing that Americans have been trained not to act on their suspicions when “diversity” is at stake. According to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks in the United States (the 9/11 Commission), “al Qaeda... considered the environment in the United States so hospitable that the 9/11 operatives used America as their staging area for further training and exercises—traveling into, out of, and around the country, and complacently using their real names with little fear of capture.” 

Seaver points out that the FortHood massacre was prompted by the shooter’s religious beliefs but that “commentators resorted to the inadequate terms of political correctness to explain the event.” Army Chief of Staff George Casey’s statement—“As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse”—is an eerily perfect illustration. How many people have to die to preserve the illusion of “our diversity?”

  • Share

Most Commented

October 29, 2024

1.

The Looming Irrelevance of Middle East Study Centers

Today’s Middle Eastern Studies Centers are facing a crisis due to the winds of change in the Middle East and their own ideological echo chamber....

November 19, 2024

2.

Lee Zeldin Should Reform EPA Science Policy

NAS welcomes the nomination of Congressmen Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency....

November 20, 2024

3.

NAS Welcomes Administrator McMahon's Nomination to Serve as Education Secretary

With McMahon, the new administration has a chance to drastically slim down and depoliticize the Education Department....

Most Read

May 15, 2015

1.

Where Did We Get the Idea That Only White People Can Be Racist?

A look at the double standard that has arisen regarding racism, illustrated recently by the reaction to a black professor's biased comments on Twitter....

October 12, 2010

2.

Ask a Scholar: What is the True Definition of Latino?

What does it mean to be Latino? Are only Latin American people Latino, or does the term apply to anyone whose language derived from Latin?...

May 26, 2010

3.

10 Reasons Not to Go to College

A sampling of arguments for the idea that college may not be for everyone....