A while back, I tried to figure out just what, exactly, university offices of diversity, multiculturalism, inclusion, etc., etc., actually do. As it turns out, the main thing they do is tell people how wonderful diversity is, kind of like the way preachers tell people how great and important Jesus is. That’s why I titled the resulting article, somewhat facetiously, “Evangelists for Diversity.”

But now it seems that a couple of professors at the California Institute of Integral Studies have actually formed a cult (or at least something cult-like) centered around love of diversity. When the Institute’s administrators investigated the actions of a married pair of professors in the Institute’s anthropology department, they were “so stunned by the information thus far provided by our students” that they canned the professors immediately “for the students’ well-being.” The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s account of CIIS’s anthropology department (which is, unfortunately, behind a pay wall) is truly shocking.

An introductory class called “Building Alliances” sounds eerily like the way church groups sometimes ask members to tell the tale of how they came to Christ, except in this case students were asked to recount how they “came to diversity:”

In teaching [the class], Mr. [Richard] Shapiro [one of the canned professors] assured them confidentiality and urged them to bring up deeply personal experiences to confront their biases and undergo a wrenching transformation that would turn them into better advocates for the downtrodden.

Based on student testimony, Angana Chatterji, the other canned professor, and her husband, Mr. Shapriro, were cult-like figures, presiding over their students like tyrants and demanding unquestioning obedience:

In the classroom, she was known to publicly hector students about poor effort or flawed work until they teared up—all, she and her supporters say, for the sake of helping them reach their potential.  …

The hearing board that handled the two professors’ cases said they had fostered a “siege mentality” in which they were constantly seen as threatened. It said the couple’s status as the department’s only full-time professors gave them inordinate power because students found it very difficult to get through the program without taking several classes from them and having them as advisers. The pair largely determined which students would advance, receive scholarships, or get a chance to travel abroad.

And, like a cult, the professors’ loyal student followers were quick to condemn the heresy of other students who weren’t sufficiently faithful to diversity:

They are known to fault one another in class for not sufficiently embracing radicalism, sometimes deriding others’ views as reflecting “bourgeois liberalism,” and they play a major role in campus’s identity-based student organizations and student protests [such as, no joke, pushing for gender-neutral bathrooms].  …

Another doctoral student, Heidi Rhodes, was dismissive of student complaints that the professor’s marriage posed a conflict, saying she has seen students make such allegations “if Richard does not affirm a student’s racism or sexism against Angana, or if Angana does not affirm a student’s anti-Semitism against Richard.”

The rest of the article includes allegations of breaking student confidence and giving fake grades. Is this what diversity hath wrought? These professors may not be racists, but they don’t sound like terribly decent people, either.