Berkeley initiative launched on equity, diversity and inclusion…

Does Berkeley not know the concept of “diversity” in higher education was pioneered by conservative Supreme Court Justice Powell in order to promote his reactionary Jim Crow driven view of a permanently racially balkanized world?

Perhaps one is not surprised that the scions of global sweatshop operator Levi Strauss would be so interested in these ideas and so willing to throw money at them.

What has happened at Berkeley to the vision of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King of a genuinely inclusive, color-blind and post-racial America?  Surely the starting point for such a goal is for the state (and its agents like UC Berkeley) to stop using racial and other classifications that divide society?

Recall that it was the experience of Berkeley students in the civil rights movement, and in particular their participation in Freedom Summer in Mississippi, that gave Berkeley its permanent place in the pantheon of progressive politics when those same students led the Free Speech Movement on the Berkeley campus in 1964.

A sad day for my alma mater.