Even janitors must pledge allegiance to diversity and ‘inclusion’ if they want to get hired at the University of Cincinnati. We all know what that means.

The new hiring policy at the University of Cincinnati is straight out of a George Orwell novel. Since July 1, everyone from full professor to part-time custodian is now required to swear allegiance to the cult of inclusion and diversity.

If you want to apply to any hourly wage job on the UC campus, you will need to write a paragraph explaining “how your qualifications prepare you to work with faculty, staff and students from cultures and backgrounds different from your own.” If you would like to teach students or work as office staff, get ready to submit a “Diversity and Inclusion statement” describing your “contributions (or potential contributions) to diversity, inclusion and leadership.” In other words, show your track record of belonging to or promoting the pet interest groups of the Left.

But what if you don’t have a track record? What if you haven’t marched at pride, co-founded a Black Lives Matter chapter, or lobbied for trans men to use women’s bathrooms? Don’t panic: notice the word “potential.” All they really need to hear from you is that you want to do those things. Because if you don’t, then the university doesn’t want you.

Conservatives Need Not Apply

It would have been more forthright for the university to put a sign on its front lawn saying “Conservatives not wanted.” But that would wreck their narrative. In a supreme act of self-delusion, the university boasts its new hiring policy shows a “commitment to diversity and inclusion.” Funny how screening out conservatives, including many evangelical Christians and practicing Catholics, is apparently a step towards greater “diversity” and “inclusion.” Orwell must be laughing.

UC doesn’t get the joke, because just as in Orwell’s dystopian novel “Animal Farm,” words are departing from their dictionary meanings. The terms “diversity” and “inclusion” have become code for a new cultural ideology. They represent this: “We will show our tolerance by hiring the full rainbow of skin colors in equal numbers, which can trump professional qualifications. Everyone must also celebrate the gamut of sexual preferences and fetishes, and adhere to the idea that ‘anything goes’ and ‘no preaching morality.’”

So, like the ruling animals in “Animal Farm” who declared that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” the University of Cincinnati says “[w]e’re all better off with diversity in our lives” even though their “diversity” doesn’t include conservatives or people of just about any religion.

Lumped together with racists and bigots, conservatives are outside of the circle of trust. They can’t be allowed even to change toilet paper or unload the dishwashers at the University of Cincinnati, because someone somewhere might feel offended or threatened at the idea that someone within the bowels of that university may not agree that racial and sexual preferences are the best way to organize a society.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Even more disturbing, it looks like UC is merely jumping on board a train that’s already rolling through campuses across the country. The UC news release mentions that other universities, including the University of California-San Diego, already use diversity and inclusion statements when hiring.

Oh, the irony. At this very moment, Canada’s most influential leftist lawyers are busy destroying Trinity Western University, a private evangelical college, all because its covenant encourages students and staff to abide by Christian norms of moral conduct. While UC’s pledge is mandatory, TWU’s pledge is voluntary and optional. But it includes the part about keeping sexual relations within traditional male-female marriages, so it has become anathema and TWU is being skewered as unwelcoming to gay people.

As a result of TWU’s covenant, the law societies of three provinces, including Canada’s biggest, have vowed to prevent any TWU law school graduates from becoming members of the bar. Apparently, anyone who attends a school with such a “hateful” oath is not fit to be licensed as a lawyer.

So leftist pledges are an enlightened step towards greater social harmony, and it’s okay to require them. But Christian pledges are as vile as swastikas and must be annihilated. Is anyone surprised at this development?

The new religion is getting aggressive about replacing the old, and conservative and Christian professors, accountants, doctors, psychologists, secretaries, and even night watchmen will soon encounter ideological barriers to entry on campuses across America. But will they fare any better in the private sector?

Workplaces Screen for Ideology

Hardly. The doors of many businesses seem to be closing to anyone who doesn’t delight in seeing a giant rainbow flag projected across the White House. Even top executives are not exempt, as made obvious in the witch hunt on former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced out of his job because he had donated $1,000 to let California voters have their say about defining marriage.

Eich tried to apologize, and promised to promote “equality” at Mozilla, but his transgression was unpardonable: he had touched the untouchables. Slate succinctly summarized the new game rules: “Mr. Eich, right now we’re in a world where you have to not be a bigot if you want to be an effective leader of an organization like Mozilla. And it’s about time.”

In Canada the same story has been playing out, and lawyers who do not support same-sex marriage are among the hardest hit. They are now treated like traitors by their own profession, shunned, and excluded. Their very existence in law firms is considered a hazard that may alienate important clients, since more than 70 major Canadian corporations belong to a group called Legal Leaders for Diversity (LLD), which pledges to do business only with law firms that support same-sex marriage.

Then there are Canadian doctors, who are fast running out of options if they don’t want anything to do with killing their patients. Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government passed a federal law legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide, Canada’s largest province has eliminated the right of conscientious objection, mandating that doctors who don’t want to perform the killing must refer to another doctor who will.

Too bad for Christian doctors who view such a referral as participating in the murder of their patient. Their moral qualms are now seen as extremist and even dangerous to public welfare. The Ontario government’s message is that if these doctors don’t like it, they are free to resign.

The New Iron Curtain

Where is all this going? For those of us who have had experience with totalitarian regimes, including Communism, the signs are uncanny. Who would have thought that a mere 25 years after the West won and Communism fell in Eastern Europe, that same spirit of oppression would choke liberty in its most unlikely victims?

North Americans may soon end up living and working under conditions that were once commonplace in the Soviet Union. They will learn to live a dual life, concealing their faith and their true convictions. To get and keep their jobs, they will parrot the required mantras about inclusion and diversity. They may show up at the required events, waving the flags and singing the tunes, just as workers in Communist countries once participated with obligatory enthusiasm in compulsory festivities on the First of May. It won’t mean they agree, but they will do it to survive.

Then, there will be those who won’t conform. They will accept persecution rather than failing to stand up for the truth. The West is starting to heat its own crucible of Aleksander Solzhenitsyns, Vaclav Havels, and similar brave dissidents in the making.