Owing to its left-leaning political atmosphere, the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, home of the principal campus of the University of Massachusetts, is often ironically referred to by the local inhabitants as the People’s Republic of Amherst, and the folks in charge of UMass—as the state university is called—nowadays seem more determined than ever to live up to this caricature of radical political orthodoxy. Their latest political gambit, which has once again thrown the university into an uproar, has been an attempt to establish “contributions to multiculturalism” as the basis upon which faculty members’ merit raises, promotions, and tenure will be based. Henceforth, professors at UMass will be obliged to file an annual report on what, if anything, their teaching and their scholarship has contributed to the university’s multiculturalist agenda. Those who meet the requisite multiculturalist tests will be advanced; those ...

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