iSteve commenter Stephen Paul Foster of FosterSpeak writes:
Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
The Diversity Parkinson’s Law: “Diversity work expands to fill the time of the staff added to the diversity payroll.”
Diversity professionals talk about how important diversity is, and since there is never enough diversity and no one can tell you exactly what it is, much less when you’ve reached “peak diversity” or if you’re even close, you can never have enough people to remind everyone how important it is. The more the staff, the more the diversity-talk. The more diversity-talk there is, ergo, the more important it is.
Are you beginning to grasp the circularity in play? Since the language of “diversity” is so nebulous, abstract and expansive, the work of “diversity” is simply the praising of diversity, or as they put it, “celebrating diversity.”
Notice how much “diversity” work contrasts with most other kinds of university employment, a math professor, for example. A math professor isn’t paid to talk about how important mathematics is; he doesn’t have to. He just teaches people how to do mathematics because it is obvious how important mathematics is. You only hire as many math professors as you have students who want or need to learn mathematics; any additional math profs would have nothing to do.
Or, take the custodian who cleans the classrooms and how quickly nasty things get without him: think what would happen to him if all he did was talk about how important it is to have tidy buildings but never emptied the trash cans.
