Harvard has sentenced its student-athletes to mandatory diversity training. Last Tuesday, every athlete from Harvard's 41 different teams was required to attend a session entitled ìCommunity Building and Diversity for Athletes" as part of its ongoing bid to be recertified by the NCAA in 2007. The session was led by Elaine Penn, a motivational speaker and ex-college athlete whose promotional web site touts her as one who can "reach your audience in a way that will help plant that seed for lasting change." Penn's presentation at Harvard covered questions of tolerance, focussing especially on racism and sexism.

Athletes told the Crimson that they were offended by the assumption that as athletes, they needed special help learning to be considerate of people from different backgrounds:

ìI think the speaker vastly overestimated the level of prejudice that was present in her audience,î rower Jeremy N. King í04 said. ìThe content of the event was unnecessary and, at times, insulting to Harvard athletes.î

At one point, Penn proposed a scenarioówhich she dubbed ìsubtle racismîóin which a biracial couple sitting in a restaurant is confronted by another patron who uses a racial slur.

King said that he and his teammates were alarmed at what he called Pennís ìabsurd assumptionî that athletes might have trouble identifying the use of a derogatory epithet as racist.

Other athletes also said they were perplexed as to why they were mandated to attend the session. They said they felt they are exposed to a broader spectrum of racial backgrounds than most other Harvard students.

ìIn general sports break down stereotypes,î football player John F. X. Connors í06 said. ìWeíre exposed to a very diverse mix of people. The meeting wouldíve been better geared toward the rest of the student body, who are exposed to much less diversity than we are.î

Harvard's Assistant Director of Athletics Sheri Norred insists that student-athletes were not compelled to attend the session because they are less sensitive than other students, but because they could be compelled to attend. Attendance at last year's inaugural athletic diversity training session was voluntary--and was, in Norred's word, "pathetic." So this year it was required. Norred stressed that the athletic department was not singling out athletes as especially insensitive: ìQuite honestly, if we could have a conference for the whole school that would be great,î she said. In other words, Harvard athletes are no more or less in need of diversity training than the rest of the Harvard student body--which is very much in need of diversity training. Despite student complaints, the Student Athlete Advisory Committee is recommending that the program be mandatory next year, too.

It's common for college athletes to be subjected to sensitivity training. And despite Norred's protests, the offended Harvard students read things right: the rationale is that jocks are less refined and intelligent than non-jocks; that as inhabitants of a muscular, competitive world they are less cerebral and more visceral, more likely to act than think, more likely to use force than reason, more apt to descend to interactive ugliness than to demonstrate tolerance and self-restraint.

The NCAA encourages this stereotype, ironically, by trying so hard to shatter it: it runs a number of diversity programs, including training workshops, as well as a Gender Equity Resource Center for women in sports. The message is double-edged: on the one hand, the NCAA wants to represent college athletics as an enlightened and progressive enterprise; on the other hand, the emphasis it places on diversity training and programming suggests that left to its own devices, college athletics is rife with racism and sexism, that athletes and coaches need guided re-education to cure them of their intolerant, loutish ways. The winners are people like Penn, who peddle instant thought reform--or, in Penn's words, "help plant that seed for lasting change"--for a tidy fee.

I suspect this madness will not end until the Baby Boom generation retires or dies off (which ever comes first) and the nation goes through what Strauss and Howe (in their book Generations) call the Fourth Turning.

What's so insane about this is the sports teams are the most likely place for students to actually work with someone of a different race. Remember when Jack Kemp sort of ran for President--turns out he was the only guy in Congress who'd actually worked with black men as an equal.
"What's not mandatory must be made compulsory."

Harvard lost it's NCAA certification? Why?

I can see the logical outcome of this in several years:

The Big Game starts with a beautiful kickoff. The two teams run towards one another. The receiver give the other team's quarterback the ball. Everybody hugs. The cheerleaders, accompanied by the massed string orchestras of both colleges, give a stirring rendition of "Imagine". Then everybody goes home for wine and brie.