WSU’s educators evaluate their students as potential teachers using a variety of criteria, including whether the student “exhibits an understanding of the complexities of race, power, gender, class, sexual orientation and privilege in American society.” Surely the ability to understand and work fairly and equally with kids from all walks of life is a legitimate skill for the College of Education to develop in its students.

WSU evaluated Swan four times and he failed, on that issue, four times. Whether his failure was unfair is a question that would require close examination of facts presented by Swan and by the faculty members who evaluated him. But Swan’s supporters want to turn his predicament into another attack on political correctness. Diversity training, they maintain, is nothing more than a reeducation camp, designed to transform conservatives into liberals. Ah, if only it were so easy (sarcasm in italics).

Again, Swan and his helpers would have a point if diversity training attempted to persuade Swan to change his opinion about abortion or gay marriage. But training Swan to treat gay students, or Muslim students, or nonwhite students, with the same openness and respect that he would give to a white male Christian student, isn’t thought control. It’s behavioral control, and schools have a right to control the behavior of their employees by assuring that teachers do not violate anti-discrimination laws or policies. Schools are also entitled to teachers who teach every student effectively.

Did the university go too far by asking Swan “to sign an agreement to respect community norms and appreciate diversity”? What Swan “appreciates” is solely in Swan’s head and therefore gives rise to a legitimate claim of thought control. That’s presumably why the university withdrew the proposed agreement. (Asking him to respect community norms, on the other hand, is unobjectionable, at least if interpreted as seeking agreement that he will treat each of his students with respect, even if they aren’t mini-me versions of Swan.)

In any event, Swan completed the training (which he grumblingly characterizes as a “grilling”) and is off to the real world, presumably with no significant violence done to his conservative beliefs.

After finishing classes this month, he will spend 3 1/2 months student-teaching in Othello, which is overwhelmingly Hispanic.

The experience should be good for him.