The Patriot Post® · Forced 'Diversity' Can Only Hurt STEM Fields

You’d have to be living in a cave to miss the current national fervor over “whiteness” and all the baggage that comes along with being white in this country. In a range of fields and industries, the number one concern is that they’re too white. “White privilege,” indeed.

Now there’s a whiteness problem in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), apparently, and there’s a big push to make sure that changes.

For example, according to a survey at MachineDesign, “Our 2015 Salary Survey highlights the current work environment of our engineering readers. It shows that our engineering workforce is dominated by white males age 50 and over. One of the major concerns expressed by a majority of our responding engineers was the ability to find qualified engineering talent. One solution to this issue is to encourage diversity among future engineers and promote STEM education among women and minorities.”

So the only way to find more STEM talent is to make sure they’re less white? For a variety of reasons, that doesn’t seem right. But with every other segment of society jumping on the diversity bandwagon to appease the race hustlers, it’s fitting that STEM is already on board.

After all, what’s more important than diversity in fields that deal with all aspects of public life, including science and medicine?

The push for more diversity in STEM is serious business. Just this week, Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the “launch of a $150 million effort to directly address historic underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, and to prepare a new, more diverse generation of researchers and scholars to assume leading roles in tackling some of the world’s great challenges.”

That’s quite a statement. There’s nothing wrong with institutions looking for more “underrepresented” students to enroll in their programs, but shouldn’t schools be looking for the best students regardless of their skin color or ethnicity?

We can assume that not a penny of that cool $150 million will help any poor white kid in Dubuque, Iowa, who dreams of a job as an engineer. Good luck, kid. Whites need not apply for the Hopkins-Bloomberg initiative.

Back in the world of common sense, shouldn’t employers and government offices be filled with those who actually have the talent and experience to fill those positions, regardless of their skin color? If new STEM students or STEM graduates are black, Hispanic, or Asian, God bless them. But the obsession over diversity doesn’t come without serious problems.

Researcher Heather Mac Donald writes, “President Joe Biden has now taken the push for ‘diversity’ in STEM to a new level. His candidate to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the largest funder of the physical sciences in the U.S., is a soil geologist at the University of California, Merced. She has no background in physics, the science of energy, or the energy sector. She has never held a position as a scientific administrator.”

Mac Donald adds, “[Asmeret Asefaw] Berhe would be the first black woman to head the $7 billion office, and that is reason enough, according to the diversity mantra, why she should oversee X-ray synchrotrons, the development of nuclear weapons, and ongoing research on nuclear fusion. Her nomination requires Senate confirmation; if Berhe will not commit to hiring and grantmaking on the basis of scientific expertise alone, irrespective of race and sex, senators should vote her appointment down.”

Good point. At least someone thinks scientific knowledge and experience should be part of the conversation. If Berhe were green or red, it wouldn’t matter to anyone if she had the background to back up her diversity.

This is just one of many examples of people being hired to please the diversity crowd instead of their background, education, and experience.

Those factors are out the window, but you can bet your last dollar that America’s competitors aren’t playing the diversity game when it comes to making sure they dominate STEM fields in the 21st century.