Law students ‘gender shamed’ in week one

Why are law students being forced to wade through DEI dogma on their way to getting a law degree?

When two followers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion came knocking a few weeks ago, they were exceedingly polite and humble when offering to share their religion with me. When I said “no thank you”, they took their leave with a smile and good grace. Disciples of the DEI religion don’t take the same approach.

Religion is the only way to describe what students had to endure last week when they returned to law school at one of Australia’s most prestigious sandstone universities. In week one of semester one, postgraduate law students were lectured to – in the moral, not intellectual, sense – about DEI. The compulsory shaming course included a long slide show hectoring about how poorly women were doing in the law and how the rich were doing very nicely. Welcome to Gender-meets-Class Wars 101.

The shaming session would have been perfectly at home in a gender studies unit, or in a Greens partyroom meeting, or in conversation with Clementine Ford. But why are law students forced to wade through DEI dogma on their way to getting a law degree?

Never mind that, to take the latest numbers in NSW, female solicitors (56 per cent) outnumber male solicitors (46 per cent). Never mind the national data that shows women outnumber men in private legal practice, in corporate legal roles, in government legal roles, in community legal roles and in other legal roles.

These numbers look like we have just about reached equality of opportunity for men and women in the law.

If so, we can give ourselves a quiet thumbs up. Equality of opportunity is one of the hallmarks of a healthy Western democracy and a gentle pat on the back is not out of place.

Alas, DEI zealots want more: they insist on equality of outcome. Hence DEI dogma complains that women are not becoming partners at law firms at the same rate as men, or becoming silks or judges at the same rate as men because of systemic barriers.

Another slide featured former Law Council president Pauline Wright claiming sexual harassment is the “key reason why women leave the law”.

It’s not surprising the lecturer didn’t question any of the claims that formed part of the DEI slide show. Who would be game to do so when the curriculum is set by higher powers?

None of the students forced to sit through this indoctrination were game to ask searching questions, either.

One law student who attended told me a young man sitting next to them wasn’t game to go to the bathroom for fear of being shamed for not hanging around for the self-flagellation. I haven’t named the university involved because the student who drew my attention to the issue doesn’t deserve to be marked down for asking questions about compulsory DEI shaming lessons.

But humble taxpayers who fund universities are entitled to ask whether this aggressive assertion of left-wing dogma is appropriate, let alone accurate.

Given that universities are meant to be places where the marketplace of ideas thrive, let’s ask some of the questions that lecturers don’t and students are afraid to. Let’s start with the most obvious: what role does choice have in determining women’s career paths? What if more women than men want to work fewer hours, in less demanding jobs? Do more women than men want to work part time, to perhaps make time to raise their children, or even not to work at all, for some period – or perhaps at all – if their partner can support the family financially?

By refusing to talk about women’s choices, you rubbish the terrific gains made by women for women. Empowerment means much more than securing, in equal numbers, the same roles as men. Genuine empowerment means having real choices.

And what about the definitions and descriptions of “sexual harassment”? Though students were afraid to ask, we will.

Doesn’t a broader definition of sexual harassment necessarily create higher numbers of “sexual harassment? What if the definition is too broad? Doesn’t that undermine the power of the term?

While we can all agree on obvious things being sexual harassment, the line between social ineptness and harassment gets harder to draw if you’re not careful with terminology.

At minimum, these issues are contestable – and universities should be the perfect place to thrash out these issues. Instead, lecture rooms are being co-opted along cradle-to-grave path of indoctrination where subtlety and nuance are not welcome.

It’s an overstatement to compare our universities to Stalinist re-education camps or to the compulsory digestion of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao, but there are some disturbing similarities. The compulsory enforcement of a single dogma for one thing.

Behind this curriculum is an aggressive feeder industry determined to proselytise DEI dogma to law students ahead of actual instruction about law. Myriad legal professional bodies manufacture and push DEI dogma on to their members as re-education to help build legal hotbeds of ideology. Catching would-be lawyers in law school is a bonus for them. Like Sunday school with exams. DEI disciples are now embedded into just about every organisation of a certain size – and their job is to spread the gospel that diversity of gender, race and other traits must be good for society. Universities are suckers for this stuff, with DEI departments reaching their tentacles into the lecture rooms, making more business for themselves.

DEI isn’t merely intellectually shallow. It’s also a sly virus. Forcibly imposing DEI claims on students suggests a huge lack of confidence in the product. If DEI is so compelling, why do law schools need to force-feed it to students?

When DEI is used to advocate for equality of outcomes, we’ve moved into dangerously different territory. You’re demanding central control and command over people’s lives. You’re backing a dogma that ignores women’s individual choices and tries to shame men into submission.

Like any virus, DEI is spreading rapidly and way beyond its original homes. Diversity shaming is not limited to gender. The UK Telegraph recently reported that the University of Cardiff told students not to use colloquial phrases such as “a piece of cake” and “kill two birds with one stone” because they are “very British-English” and may not be understood by foreigners.

DEI offers endless opportunities for shaming and empire building. When the Australian Human Rights Commission tells schools to abandon Harmony Day because it’s too happy and “hides systemic racism”, you know the cradle-to-grave shaming schtick funded with our tax dollars has gone too far.

So let’s make some positive suggestions. A good start would be to offer DEI shaming sessions only ever as an elective. Let the kids choose this modern religion for themselves. And for those students who do choose it, encourage them to ask questions, just as they might of any other set of ideas presented as religious dogma. Diversity when it comes to gender, race, religion is a fine thing. But diversity of thought is even grander.