War broke out at Duke Divinity School. Rod Dreher wrote of a Catholic professor, Paul Griffiths, who took umbrage at being informed that he was required to take “racial sensitivity training,” for which he claimed that he was being illiberally and anti-intellectually attacked and punished.

Griffiths wrote an excoriating reply, saying something to the effect that the program was intellectually vapid and beneath the level of discourse an elite theological school should be having.

Dreher, noting in his initial post that he had only one side of the story, called this a travesty if true. In a followup, he posts a missive from another professor at DDS, Valerie Cooper, who proudly wears the title SJW:

[Ed. Note: Valerie Cooper has requested that her comments be removed. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do so, as they were published by Rod Dreher and used here under fair use. However, as the source of the comments has chosen to remove them, I have done the same.]

She poses two important questions: Who owns the church? Will its prejudices be called out or coddled? Obviously, the second question is language-loaded, since the answer to the first question should be obvious too. The church is “owned” by its members. It’s not subject to the approval of outsiders. To its owners, its tenets are beliefs, not prejudices. Outsiders are certainly free to “call out” its tenets, but to call respecting the beliefs of another coddling suggests that the beliefs of members are wrong and the beliefs of others, like Cooper, are right.

That’s the nature of religion, and much blood has been shed in its name. Remember, this isn’t coming from a lean-in group, but Duke Divinity School. It’s kinda the place where religion is supposed to be taken seriously and respected.

Cooper makes an assumption that might be missed if you squint: Griffiths’ issue with racial sensitivity training means he is against Duke’s policy of diversity and against diversity as a whole. Or, though unsaid, racist. After all, if someone wasn’t racist, what issue could he have with racial sensitivity training?

In the comments to Dreher’s post, some characterize the training as Mr. Rogers spewing platitudes. An hour, maybe a day, lost. Whether this was the sort of sensitivity training where one is required to apologize for one’s own race or acknowledge that it’s in debt to others such that race and gender are the primary pedagogical concerns, isn’t clear. To a divinity prof, secular instruction that requires him to dismiss his religious beliefs in favor of employment in the “age of trump” may be a dubious demand. At no time does Griffith challenge diversity as a concept. He challenges being compelled to be “trained” in it.

A commenter to Dreher’s post, under the ‘nym Treehugger, offers (as one part of a two-part snapshot, both of which are well worth reading) a story.

First snapshot: As an undergrad in the mid-90s, I marched into office hours for a course on some slice of Western thought/philosophy, newly armed with the notion that dominant discourse effectively erases the roles and narratives of women and minorities, and proceeded to complain that the reading list consisted of only white men.

My complaint was met with annoyance and exasperation, but the prof did something else: he asked me what, or who, specifically, should be on the reading list and what then should be replaced – and why. In other words, he treated my complaint as an argument, something within, and not outside the bounds of reasonable discussion, and by doing so (as I realized in that moment) took my own conviction more seriously than I had taken it myself.

I was speechless, and embarrassed. The prof said I could think about it and come back. So I did – I studied the syllabus to try to see where I’d wedge the one or two “replacements” that I’d mustered, and I had to appreciate the thoughtfully-considered, tight set of readings. I went back and admitted to the integrity of the syllabus, and shared what I’d come up with anyway, and this time the exchange focused on what those authors substantively have to offer, and in relation to what contexts or themes.

Thinking back, maybe I owe this professor an even greater debt of gratitude than I realized in his commitment to pedagogy, his stubbornness in the practice of reason; because maybe I was at risk of that dangerous turn, that reactive and self-certain retreat from honest dialogue and toward (non-)intellectual closure. What stuck with me is that reason abides – full stop. Reason is the great equalizer — available to anyone and all of us and asks only that we take it up in good faith, that we make the case. This, to me, is what I always thought worth protecting. (Comment broken into readable paragraphs.)

Reason abides. Reason is the great equalizer. Then. Now?

Notice the difference when what matters, what is taken seriously, is the value and quality of ideas. I can almost hear today’s SJW’s explaining that I was merely “subjugated” by the force (the violence!) of hegemonic discourse and institutional power structures. I know these arguments front-to-back and back again (I think warriorsplaining is getting as tedious as mansplaining!). I wonder if these days that prof would be drummed out for not immediately apologizing for the “harm” caused by his syllabus.

After the Tuvel kerfuffle, to the disgrace of philosophy warriors, and the rush to count genitalia and melanin, to the disgrace of passionate lawyerish types, the answer seems clear enough.

The professor in Treehugger’s tale took the question of diversity more seriously than did the jargon-armed student. It was not because the prof was racist, or even against diversity, but that there needed to be a better reason than counting vaginas, etc. Granted, it’s far easier to just add up numbers, to quantify rather than qualify. Granted also that there is no doubt that gender and race had been preclusive factors in the past; there was discrimination. There still is discrimination.

The serious question is what to do about it. When Griffiths challenged the vapid solution, the leap of faith that it reflected implicit racism lacks reason, defies logic. In the rush to fix one problem, the solution is simplistic and irrational. Griffiths’ refusal to go along to get along doesn’t suggest he’s a racist. It suggests he’s reasonable.

Reasonableness is not an evil to be eradicated in the name of social justice, and yet anyone who adheres to reason will be burned at the stake, even at Duke Divinity School, where beliefs are sublime.

Update: The Griffiths docs are now available. First, from Anathea Portier-Young:

On behalf of the Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee, I strongly urge you to participate in the Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training planned for March 4 and 5.

Two days is quite a commitment.

Phase I provides foundational training in understanding historical and institutional racism. It helps individuals and organizations begin to “proactively understand and address racism, both in their organization and in the community where the organization is working.” It is the first step in a longer process.

Food will be served. Paul Griffiths’ response:

Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance.

Dean Elaine Heath replies:

It is inappropriate and unprofessional to use mass emails to make disparaging statements–including arguments ad hominem–in order to humiliate or undermine individual colleagues or groups of colleagues with whom we disagree. The use of mass emails to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable, especially in a Christian institution.

Takeaway: Not even the dean at DDS knows what an ad hominem argument is.

H/T Stephanie West Allen