No individual can be diverse, but only a collectivity. For logical reasons, it is impossible to recruit more “diverse” students, for no individual is diverse from himself or herself. Basic statistics informs us that only the standard deviation of some variable describing a group such as a student body, city, or nation can be greater or smaller. For any given population, increasing “diversity” then simply means replacing some members by others with different characteristics. Diversification always implies losers, namely those members in the middle who have so far defined the standard. It produces flatter distributions. In populations that are not growing, it is a zero-sum game, a simple substitution of members, as in ethnic cleansing. It is an artificial and political move in opposition to natural justice and law. 

The frantic quest for “diversity” is a deeply anti-Catholic impulse. It finds no support in Catholic moral and social teaching. There is no mention of diversity as a goal of Catholic life in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or in any of the pastoral, moral, or social constitutions and encyclicals before and after Vatican II. Diversity has never been advocated by the great thinkers of the Church, who have instead preached unity. And there is a good reason for this glaring absence: Catholics marvel at the natural diversity of God’s Creation, at the difference in people, animals, landscapes, plants, and languages. They want to preserve as much of this diversity as is possible, because it enriches all of us. But they will resist disturbing the order God has willed for the world. Erecting skyscrapers in the Sahara Desert, crossbreeding species, developing artificial languages, dying our hair green—all of these increase diversity, but at what cost? Artificial diversification drives out the natural diversity of God’s very good Creation.