Viewpoint Diversity

Scope

Derived from differences in socioeconomic status, political and philosophical views, religion, life experience, personality, cognition, specific cultural backgrounds, race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Definition

Understanding and engaging in positive intellectual inquiry to develop self-awareness and awareness of others, and to foster intellectual humility.

Objectives

Cultivate intellectual humility, improve thinking, challenge unsound ideas, give good ideas wider acceptance, notice untested assumptions, explore new questions, rigorously challenge theories, make progress toward truth, think critically, understand others' perspectives, communicate effectively, work out responses to disagreements, and respond respectfully to challenges.

Distinction

It is not about empathy, tolerance, or consensus.

Core Principle

The best way to deal with unsound views is not censorship, but more—and better—speech, ensuring views are always open to rebuttal.

Requirement for Effectiveness

Opinions must engage productively with one another, fostering curiosity, conversation, challenge, and contestation.

2023-06-29

2023-12-05

Ongoing

Put simply, viewpoint diversity is about understanding and engaging in something I call “positive intellectual inquiry” to develop a better sense of self-awareness and awareness of others. Viewpoint diversity is an academic framework for Positive Education. It’s not about a new way to teach – it’s simply a new way to see the things we teach already. There are three main objectives of practicing positive intellectual inquiry: [...] Viewpoint Diversity is all about understanding that all people have unique experiences and see things differently. It’s not about empathy. It’s not about tolerance. And it’s certainly not about consensus. (Don’t worry, we know these are all good things! That’s just not what viewpoint diversity is all about.) [...] 2. To cultivate intellectual humility. Fostering viewpoint diversity helps to promote a culture of intellectual humility. Intellectual humility is a nonpartisan virtue. It is a check against self-righteousness and a balance that allows us to allow for ambiguity.

To sum up: Greater viewpoint diversity on university campuses (and other ideologically monochrome institutions) is a good and important goal — but also, on its simple terms, an inadequate one. Viewpoint diversity should not just mean the presence of differing opinions on a campus or some other setting; those opinions must be made to engage productively with one another. The ultimate justification for this engagement of views isn’t that it furthers the cause of representation; it’s that it abets [...] The argument that I was wrong comes to this: Like a tumor, a bad idea will metastasize if allowed to grow unchallenged and uncontradicted. Viewpoint diversity introduces a range of opinions that can shrink, if not destroy, those bad ideas, at least when given the opportunity to engage them. At the same time, an insistence on viewpoint diversity can give good ideas a chance to win wider acceptance, even when initially they are unpopular and held by a tiny few. The role of a university or any [...] different opinions or the presence of a few tokenized contrarian voices. It asks for curiosity, conversation, challenge, contestation— in a word, engagement. It means a set of mental habits and institutional practices that goes beyond the current buffet-table vision of viewpoint diversity. And it depends on academic leaders who believe that the core task of the university is to promote a culture of civil disagreement, however much resistance that generates on campus. Accomplishing this is the

First, we need not give a platform to viewpoints that are not open to rebuttal by those who take the opposing position. Core to viewpoint diversity is the tried-and-true principle that the best way to deal with unsound views is not censorship, but more—and better—speech. Views must always be open to rebuttal, and we have no obligation to shield anyone’s opinion from public critique. But it is also true that forms of speech that cannot be rebutted—for example, name calling—should not be [...] Guided by this framework, our pursuit of diversity should include the viewpoint diversity that can do so much to improve our thinking and help us more effectively support health. This includes engaging with viewpoints which may seem so wrongheaded as to be useless. Such viewpoints can serve as intellectual whetstones, helping sharpen ideas and shed new light on old thinking. The notion that the correct approach to bad ideas—or different ideas—is to just ignore them, at the expense of viewpoint [...] This argues for an approach to diversity that embraces viewpoint diversity along with diversity of identity, to inform a context that generates the best possible ideas. A practical example of viewpoint diversity at work, with ideas outside the mainstream sharpening our grasp of foundational arguments, was raised by the late journalist Christopher Hitchens, an often controversial thinker, who once asked an audience what they would do if they met someone who thinks the world is flat. The vast

Open Inquiry U: Heterodox Academy's Four-Point Agenda for Reforming Colleges and Universities It's time to improve our universities - together. Download the agenda Heterodox Academy Viewpoint Diversity Teaching and scholarship are better when we don’t all think the same, which is why viewpoint diversity is one of HxA’s core values. [...] Viewpoint diversity that enriches academic life can derive from differences in socioeconomic status, political and philosophical views, religion, life experience, personality, cognition, and specific cultural backgrounds, and the more commonly discussed categories of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Featured Work Listening to Our Working-Class Students March 23, 2022+Jonathan Zimmerman The Wisdom of Polarized Crowds December 21, 2017+Sean Stevens [...] When people with a wide range of worldviews, backgrounds, and experiences are present and welcomed, academic communities can more effectively notice untested assumptions, imagine and explore new questions and answers, rigorously challenge popular theories, and make continued progress toward truth. But when academic groups are more homogeneous, their work can suffer from blind spots and groupthink.