Thankfully, there are still some college professors who are not afraid to speak their minds on hot-button issues where their views will collide with prevailing academic orthodoxy.
One of them is Duke University professor Adrian Bejan. He has taught mechanical engineering there since 1984 and has authored numerous scientific books with a particular emphasis on constructal law — the organizing principle by which natural phenomena and human-designed systems evolve in a way that facilitates the optimal flow of energy and material through them. He has just published a new book entitled Diversity Through Freedom. In it, he contrasts the beneficial results that stem from diversity in nature and among humans with the harmful results that we see when governments, universities, or other organizations impose their plans for diversity (or equality or other goals) through force.
Bejan’s thinking was shaped by his youth in Romania, then ruled by a communist dictatorship. His family suffered under the regime because his parents were not of the favored “working class.” Bejan recounts how one night his father conspicuously burned many of his books to show that he wasn’t an enemy of the people — but as he explained to his son, it was the least valuable ones that were burned; the most important ones were saved and carefully hidden. In school, Bejan quickly figured out that much of what he was being taught was misleading, manipulative jargon “enrobed in clever metaphors that fool the young.” But he couldn’t be fooled.
In studying natural phenomena, Bejan concluded, “What changes the world is the ability to act, to make change, without fear. The ability does not come top-down from voices in high places. The ability bubbles up from the bottom, in a few enterprising individuals, engineers, builders, entrepreneurs, and doers.” What we should strive for, therefore, is freedom for people to learn and try — equality of opportunity, not equality of result. He often points to sports to make his point. Teams find the best players naturally and they would not be nearly as successful if they were required to make their rosters conform to some imposed notion of “diversity.”
The book abounds in scientific evidence for constructal law, with numerous photographs and charts. The message that will most resonate with AIER readers, I believe, is Bejan’s point that freedom optimizes outcomes while coercion leads to waste and conflict. His observations directly challenge many “progressive” beliefs about society.
Consider, for example, Bejan’s views about the academic world. He writes, “Academia is in trouble when the structure becomes rigid, which happens when those in charge refuse to be questioned because they are an elite, deeply in bed with even more powerful elites such as the government.” Unfortunately, our academic leaders are now much less interested in new ideas than they are in securing as much grant money for their institutions as they can from government officials. “Big money,” Bejan writes, “is funneled to those who promise ‘energy’ materials and ‘live matter’, not to those who dare to speak of fuels, machines and microscopic configurations in motion. Notions from creators with dirty hands are beneath the ruling class of science, which is indoctrinated in reductionism, and marching obediently behind the invisible.” Thus, much of the money that we spend on research is squandered.
Nowhere is the malign influence of academic groupthink more evident than in the quest for artificial diversity. University officials have so thoroughly succumbed to this artificial ideology that it infects the curriculum, hiring decisions, and research projects. Merit counts for much less than the happenstance of a person’s background — whether he or she is from an “underrepresented” group. But Bejan doesn’t think that most of the leaders who bow down to this idea actually believe it. He writes, “In reality, colleges and universities have never been woke. Instead, it’s more apt to understand these institutions as oriented around the interests and worldviews of highly educated and relatively well-off suburban whites — often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged in society — ‘social justice’ discourse notwithstanding.”
Nevertheless, the “diversity” mania marches on. Bejan finds it chillingly similar to other ideological movements in this century where people were rewarded or punished merely because of their class background. He writes, “From Latsis, Timoshenko, and Grossman, we see a project of destroying the individual and replacing him with a new ‘disadvantaged class’ that wins the class struggle by force….It was all an envious and murderous dream and its henchmen are still busy today.”
In sum, nature yields a diversity of talent, which leads to progress and benefits for all. Capitalism works that way, as do competitive sports. Unfortunately, an elite few are not content to allow nature to take its course, demanding instead an artificial system they impose and control. Bejan hits the nail on the head when he states, “The class struggle is a design of unnatural diversity: only two classes, not the natural diversity of individuals with freedom to live, associate voluntarily, and move.”
What does the future hold? Bejan is optimistic that today’s diversity mania will die out “like all the other unnatural prescriptions.” I wish I could share that optimism; the desire of some elitists to dictate how a society must function seems to be more firmly rooted in America than ever and their tools of domination are powerful.
