Earlier this year, the University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty senate adopted a new Framework for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, which, according to the campus’s Board of Regents, “places the mission of diversity at the center of institutional life so that it becomes a core organizing principle.” Nothing new under the sun there.

But UW economics professor W. Lee Hansen notes something profoundly disturbing in the framework, which apparently went unnoticed by the faculty and the administration:

To achieve the plan’s vague aims, the Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee formulated five goals and thirty detailed recommendations. Unbeknownst to faculty senators, these goals and recommendations are based on the “Inclusive Excellence” framework adopted earlier by the Board of Regents. (See Agenda Item II.6 for the March 5, 2009, meeting of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents.) That framework includes eight essential “working definitions,” among them the already-discussed diversity, as well as others: “compositional diversity,” “critical mass,” “inclusion,” “equity mindedness,” “deficit-mindedness,” “representational equity,” and “excellence.” Let us take a closer look at one of these working definitions included, namely “representational equity.” It calls for “proportional participation of historically underrepresented racial-ethnic groups at all levels of an institution, including high status special programs, high-demand majors, and in the distribution of grades.”


Political correctness has for some time mandated that everyone get an A, so it was only a matter of time before the coercive forces seeking “Diversity and Inclusive Excellence” rendered grades utterly meaningless. But to commandeer grades as a vehicle for reparations? That level of brainlessness deserves an F — no matter what color you are.