“Let People Be Free to Come Up with Ideas”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion have gotten a lot of attention over the past decade. In these pages, we’ve often lamented that universities’ focus on superficial measures of diversity undermines merit and overlooks viewpoint diversity. A new book by Duke professor Adrian Bejan, Diversity Through Freedom, emphasizes a different kind of diversity: the organic, inevitable, and beneficial diversity found in nature. He calls it “a phenomenon that has a mind of its own” that can’t be “shoehorned into a few distinct (antagonistic) classes.” The Martin Center sat down with Professor Bejan to discuss his book and its implications for higher education....