The Enduring Battle Over âMeritâ

The push for group-based preferences that began with affirmative action in the 1960s and evolved into today ’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ( DEI ) movement is now in decline.

Peter Bergen : The sad reality is that the anti-merit impulse runs deep in human history.

He says people often reject merit as the value that competence is less than other values.

Bergen says Hitler knew that expelling Jewish physicists would weaken German science.

Incompetence is easily defended by claiming that the very idea of “merit’ is a socially constructed concept whose true but hidden purpose (“white supremacy’s) is to exclude people of color.

The hiring of unqualified faculty based on race or sex bestow immediate rewards to those hired, but the costs will only be incurred decades later .