‘course, the price is you have to exhibit yourself as a feckless wimp, but apparently it’s worth it to shut up an argument you can’t handle any other way. In fact, being a feckless wimp might be a Good Thing. Shows sensitivity and all that happy horse hockey.

Get used to it. This is your future.

But diversity training did not spring up in a vacuum. Very real acts of intimidation and harassment, as well as less overt acts of exclusion has in fact occurred on campuses.

What I oppose, as does FIRE, is the use of such incidents as the justification to ram a curriculum based on falsehoods and intimidation of students who disagree with far-left ideas about race, class, and the social order.

I challenge you to go back and find even a single case of FIRE attempting to oppose diversity training based on mutual respect among people. The diversity industry is based on new and different forms of racism and classism that they piggy-back on the legitimate concern you point out.

Since diversity training actually increases those bad things….

However, I suspect none of those usages obliged students to accept that everyone in society is having a stroke, or everyone in society is committing plagarism, or that tax scams are entirely bad and should be avoided at all costs (I hope this doesn’t divert the discussion into an argument about the ethics of tax scams).
It is entirely possible to be able to recognise what is defined as a stroke, and also think that the current medical understanding of strokes is completely wrong-headed, and it is entirely possible to be able to recognize the symptoms of a narcisstic disorder and refuse to believe that they actually exist but instead maintain that psychology has misclassified the problem entirely. (To give an example, I can simultaneously know that “Dracula lived in Transylvania” and “Dracula is a fictional character”. Or, the SETI guys set up specifications for what an alien signal might look like without knowing if aliens are in fact trying to communicate with us.)
However I don’t see how someone can “recogize that systematic oppression exists in our society” and still be able to argue that systematic oppression doesn’t exist in our society.
Recognising strokes, plagarism, personality disorders, etc is a definitional game. It’s not the same as obliging people to recognise certain facts about the world – and one thing history teaches us is that facts are always up for dispute. For example, one thing science turned up is that sex doesn’t cause pregnancy. Implanatation of a fertilised egg in the lining of a suitably ready womb causes pregnancy. This is how IVF works. Put a fertilised egg in there at the right time and a pregnancy can result even if the woman in question never had sex.

Yes, very real acts of intimidation and harrassment, as well as less overt acts of exclusion have in fact occurred on campuses. And a number of those acts of intimidation and harrassment have been driven by the desire to force people to recognise certain impalatable “truths”. People have been tortured and killed because they were heretics who did not accept the religious “truths” of the authorities in power at the time (see the Spanish Inquistion). People have been tortured and killed because they did not accept the political “truths” of the authorities in power at the time (see The Great Terror in Stalinist Russia). And it’s not merely the people who were directly hurt, the desire to insist on recognition of certain truths has held back science, eg Lysenkoism in Stalinist Russia.
So far the best way we have found of avoiding those sorts of murderous behaviours is to insist that everyone tolerates the existance of other points of view, no matter how offensive they are.

. One could offer up the kind of empty food and festivals kinds of diversity training that many folks are more comfortable with, or hand out worksheets listing “traits” of various cultures (or just hand out copies of the anti-harassment policies).

Or one could issue a policy about how students, staff, etc will treat each other and how everyone is expected to handle differences of opinions, explain the reasoning behind the protocols, provide a complaints procedure, and enforce said policy.

But in the end, getting along requires an ability to look at ourselves as well as others.

This is fine. The problem with the Delaware University material is that they tried to oblige other people to adopt their views of what was right. Most of us are probably uncomfortable with being obliged to tolerate differences of opinion (I find it uncomfortable that you are so dismissive of intellectual freedom) – but it’s far better than the alternative.

I just googled “recognize.” The usages that sprang up were things like learning to recognize the signs of a stroke, how to recognize plagiarism, how to recognize and avoid tax scams, how to recognize narcissistic personality disorder. Yet, none of these usages seems to me to indicate that anyone who “recognizes” these things is required to have a stroke, commit plagiarism, accept that they have a narcissisistic personality disorder and either commit, comply with, or reject tax scams.

Certainly there are those who would object to a curricular objective that seeks that studes “recognize” that the earth is round, or that Hitler committed atrocities–and consider such an objective to be “indoctrination.” But diversity training did not spring up in a vacuum. Very real acts of intimidation and harassment, as well as less overt acts of exclusion has in fact occurred on campuses. Education is a means of countering these things, particularly within residence halls where students are frequently flung together across social, ethnic and cultural differences. One could offer up the kind of empty food and festivals kinds of diversity training that many folks are more comfortable with, or hand out worksheets listing “traits” of various cultures (or just hand out copies of the anti-harassment policies). But in the end, getting along requires an ability to look at ourselves as well as others. Some people are uncomfortable with this. Whether it is a “required” course or not is really a red herring. Many facets of university and/or dormitory life are “required.”

“A. Students will learn about the forms of oppression that are linked with social identity groups.
B. Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society.
C. Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression.”

(link http://thefire.org/pdfs/a58fdfd910795a7266a223281977847d.pdf)

Note the language. Students “will recognise”. Students are not expected to make up their own minds, based on being exposed to evidence, they “will recognise” a particular point of view. It’s one thing to be exposed to points of view that make you feel uncomfortable. It’s another thing to be expected to adopt a particular point of view. That’s indoctrination, even if the view happens to be entirely correct in and of itself.

Unsurprisingly, the University of Delaware has taken down the original files.

I am familiar with the point of view that presents racism not as an individual belief but as a social construct. This is frequently uncomfortable for priviledged groups because they are the recipients of priviledge regardless of beliefs. This view of racism is not equivalent to a statement that racism is a function of skin color. But FIRE makes that leap.

Absolutely dead wrong. It is those who believe that racism is a social construct and not an individual belief that made the leap. I’ve sat through college diversity training where I was told, point blank, I was racist because I was white. What exactly does using a demonstratively false view of the world to shame white people, or those who appear white, accomplish?

It’s not just FIRE that makes that leap, it’s the whole racism and diversity industry. Yes, they’ll deny it, but look at how they act. They fight for any skin color proxy they can get.

But, let’s ask a different question.

Why is this stuff in universities at all?

If it’s to improve the “souls” of students, why should we give it any more standing than we do the teachings of the Catholic Church?

I’m sure it does. Because I’d bet top dollar that these policies are ridiculously overly broad.

The prof appears to have been only a convenient doorway into the university as a whole.

Good. As it should be.

FIRE actively opposes anything that falls under the heading of “diversity training” on campuses.

Wrong. They oppose diversity training that is MANDATORY or FORCED upon students. Students go to college for an education, not an indoctrination. If so-called diversity training was part of a class and a student didn’t like it, he/she could drop the class. When it’s a mandatory part of resident life, as it was at the University of Delaware, it is indoctrination.