What I really admire about Coleman is how clear his reasoning is. Obfuscation like that put forth by Chris Anderson and Adam Grant stands no chance against clear reasoning.
Coleman, I just looked at the X (twitter) storm and there are literally thousands of likes on the comments calling out the BS of Chris’ post (and only tens on the comments in support of it) which is reassuring for me and I hope for you, too. Hang in there.
Great last word, Coleman. And thank you for debunking the Grant meta analysis paper. I printed it out but did not have the fortitude to read it and so was withholding detailed judgement. But your careful read and summary here equates to ‘busted!’ Disappointing that social science does not hold itself to standards of intellectual rigor.
I'm really proud of you for standing up for yourself. I was dismayed by how many of your colleagues and supposed friends praised Chris Anderson and Adam Grant for their supposed civility. They refused to criticize Chris and Adam for trying to screw you over and violate their agreement. I also think they need to be criticized for trying to publicly discredit and humiliate you. If you remember, many of these same people had a problem with Chris Rufo pushing back against the woke in education. They refused to take action against the other side's action.
Dissection of the Leslie et al meta-analysis (part 2)
-- Did the meta-analysis actually find that color-blindness was not associated with what the authors define as elements of high quality inter-group relations?
No. What the meta-analysis DID find (a point noted by Hughes in his comments about Anderson’s Free Press comments) is that color blindness was significantly associated with lower levels of stereotyping and prejudice – findings entirely consistent with Hughes’ claims in his TED talk.
-- In that case, what about multiculturalism?
Like color-blindness, multiculturalism was negatively associated with lower levels of stereotyping and prejudice, and was also negatively associated with discrimination. The magnitide of these associations was larger for multiculturalism than color-blindness. However, far and away the biggest difference between color-blindness and multiculturalism is that the former was not positively associated with support for progressive diversity-related social policies whereas , whereas there was a strong association between support for those policies and belief in multiculturalism.
The findings regarding social policy support are not surprising. Indeed, it is essentially a defining feature of belief in color blindness that one would support treating everyone equally, without regard to the individual’s race, whereas a defining feature of belief in multiculturalism (as operationalized in the meta-analysis paper) is that one supports taking race into account as part of governmental and business and educational policies.
As was noted above, however, the authors of the meta-analysis have simply defined support for those kinds of policies as an essential component of “high quality intergroup relations”, but provide zero evidence that intergroup relations actually improve when organizations (whether business or educational or governmental) adopt these kinds of social policies. One might argue that it would have been just as reasonable (and consistent with evidence mentioned below) to have replaced “support for diversity policies” with “support for equality policies” as one of the “outcome” measures in the meta-analysis – in which case, it seems very likely that color-blindness would have emerged as having the strongest relationship with “high quality intergroup relations”. The decision by the authors of the meta-analysis to make support for progressive political policies one of their so-called outcome variables reflected a political value judgment on their part, and was not based on a scintilla of evidence (certainly not any that they provide).
-- Well, then – what about the quality of “intergroup relations”– the variable that is ostensibly the focus of the meta-analysis?
The four “outcome” variable included in the meta-analysis serve, within the analysis, as proxies for the quality of intergroup relations. However, very few of the studies surveyed included any more direct kind of measure of intergroup relations, and the authors of the meta-analysis seem very comfortable completely ignoring the absence of that evidence (evidence that would seem to be required for them to make the arguments that they make in the discussion and conclusion sections of the paper).
Ironically, given Grant’s and Anderson’s claim that the findings from the meta-analysis disprove the thesis of Hughes’ talk, it was Hughes who presented evidence more directly bearing on the question of the relationship between diversity ideologies and the quality of intergroup relations. Hughes presented the findings from a large scale survey (just one of a number of surveys that have shown the same pattern) showing that during the past 10-15 years, as the ideology of color blindness has been increasingly and prominently criticized within progressive media and in elite universities, ratings by both racial minorities and whites of the quality of intergroup relations has DECLINED. In other words, coincident with the decline in belief in color blindness and increased adoption of multiculturalism within society, there has been a decline, rather than an increase, in average ratings of intergroup relations. Neither Grant, nor Anderson, nor the authors of the meta-analysis, address this seemingly dramatic contradiction between their claims and what has actually happened in our society during the past one-to-two decades.
My own dissection of the Leslie et al. (2020) meta-analysis. Because of limitations on the length of comments, I'll break my essay down into multiple comments.
Does the Leslie et al. (2020) meta-analysis prove that Coleman Hughes was wrong?
Robert Guttentag
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology
UNC Greensboro
Summary
I argue below that the meta-analysis suffers from several very significant shortcomings that should have been obvious to Dr. Grant. (i) The way in which the paper defines the elements of “high quality intergroup relations” is not based upon evidence of any kind, but instead reflects the progressive political philosophy of the authors, thereby baking into the design of the study the conclusions that the authors ultimately reached. (ii) The authors frequently draw causal conclusions from data which cannot be legitimately utilized as the foundation for a causal conclusion. (iii) In any case, the meta-analysis actually finds an association between color-blind beliefs and lower levels of prejudice and stereotyping. (iv) The claims by the authors of the meta-analysis (and by Grant and Anderson) notwithstanding, the study does not in any direct way assess factors contributing to “high quality intergroup relations”, and therefore it is unclear how the results of the meta-analysis actually bear on an assessment of the validity of the claims made in Hughes’ TED talk. Hughes, on the other hand, does provide evidence of a more direct kind supporting his claims regarding color blindness and intergroup relations.
What was the nature of the studies included in the meta-analysis?
The meta-analysis included studies that examined the association between one or more “diversity ideologies”, including “color-blindness” and “multiculturalism” (the two diversity ideologies relevant to assessing the validity of Hughes’ claims), and one or more “outcome measures” (scare quotes used here for reasons that will be made obvious in the next section) including prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and support for particular kinds of diversity policies. According to the paper’s authors, color-blindness “emphasizes minimizing the salience of [group] differences, specifically by ignoring them.” Thus, for example, if a professor grades student papers only after removing all student identity information from each paper, that would be classified as a color-blind approach to grading. According to the authors, multiculturalism, in contrast, “emphasizes acknowledging and valuing [group] differences.”
Most of the studies included in the meta-analysis were correlational studies that involved administering to participants measures of each individual’s belief in one or more diversity ideologies and measures of each individual’s placement on scales of prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and/or support for particular kinds of diversity policies. A minority (27%) of the studies were experimental in design, involving attempts to modify participant’s beliefs in diversity ideologies while assessing the effects of the change in beliefs on measure of prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and/or support for diversity policies.
1. The meta-analysis adopts a progressive political bias as part of its definition of “high quality intergroup relations”.
In the abstract of the paper, the authors refer to their focus on “4 indicators of high quality intergroup relations—reduced prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and increased diversity policy support. Thus, as part of their DEFINITION of “high quality intergroup relations”, the authors include support for what are generally considered to be politically progressive social policies, such as affirmative action, reparations, and granting citizenship automatically to the children of illegal aliens. It is apparently simply a part of the authors’ own political beliefs that support for what are generally considered to be politically progressive social policies is a component of or prerequisite for “high quality intergroup relations”. At a minimum, the authors should have cited actual evidence for this claim. They did not.
2. Correlation does not equal causation
Given that 73% of the studies included in the meta-analysis involved a correlational design, and given that the findings from correlation studies tell us little if anything about causation, the ability of the findings from the meta-analysis to draw strong causal conclusions is highly limited. The authors of the meta-analysis openly acknowledge the limitations of correlational studies, but still slip frequently into the use of causal language when describing results that are based heavily on the findings from correlational studies. Indeed, the simple labeling of discrimination, prejudice, stereotyping and support for diversity policies as “outcome measures” presupposes a particular direction of causation. Throughout the abstract, and in many places throughout the body of the paper, the authors refer to “the effects of” diversity ideologies, implying quite directly that ideologies have causal effects on the so-called outcome variables. Not only is it the case that such conclusions cannnot be conclusively drawn based upon correlational findings, but in at least one of the papers included in the analysis, the authors of the paper specifically argue for a reverse direction of causation (arguing that a so-called “outcome” measure is the real causal variable while adoption of a form of diversity ideology is the “effect”).
The meta-analysis does include the analysis of some experimental studies as well, and drawing causal conclusions is more firmly grounded when based upon evidence from such studies. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide separate analyses of the correlational vs experimental studies, so little can be said about how strongly the experimental findings support the overall conclusions of the paper. What the authors DO say, however, is that they lack sufficient evidence to determine “whether the effect of diversity ideologies on intergroup relations or the effect of intergroup relations on diversity ideologies is stronger”. Of course, the frequent use of causative language throughout the paper (references to the “effects” of diversity ideologies) is wholly inconsistent with the qualification quoted above. There should not have been ANY causal lanauge used when describing the findings from the meta-analysis, and it is surprising that Dr. Grant did not comment on that problematic feature of the meta-analysis paper.
Making your case in arguments like these requires clarity and persistence, which in turn takes intelligence and some courage too. The other side also showed intelligence and persistence. Anderson, in particular, showed ingenuity in what he chose to say and what to hide. What he didn’t show was integrity. Congratulations Coleman, I think you will be persuasive to those open to evidence. And congratulations too on calling a qualified halt to your engagement in the debate. How long to continue is a judgment call. Having read and listened to everything public, I didn’t need anything more on the table to make up my mind.
A forceful and entirely justified response! I found Grant's (and Anderson's) use of the 'meta-analysis' particularly disturbing, typical of the way elites try to bully us non-academics, to borrow a phrase from Glenn Loury, by using this kind of jargon-logged publication as a 'bluff and a bludgeon'. One question I missed in all this is: what was stopping the 'Black at Ted' people from formulating and expressing their own critiques publicly? How shameful that Anderson and co. had to step in and talk for them. So keep up the good work - know that your work is a great help to those of us who don't have the a lot of time and resources to fight this fight, but understand its importance.
This strategy of "let's do a study where the outcomes we desire are the only positive ones" seems to be rampant - Jesse Singal recently wrote about a study about trans young people that was touted as proving that early transition improved health outcomes. The outcomes they tracked were things like "body congruity" - and yeah, if you get your breasts removed, you will say that you no longer have as much distress about your chest, but that doesn't mean that it was actually a good outcome for the mental or physical health of the patient in the big picture.
I dropped out of college, in part because it seemed like the professors were sharing the truth they had already found, not encouraging students to find the truth. It sounds like it's gotten a lot worse in the last 20 years.
Now regarding Chris Anderson - if you can find Kmele Foster’s comments on this matter in the latest Fifth Column podcast, it’s worth listening to. In general he is entirely sympathetic to Coleman’s position. However he also has insight into Anderson’s motivations based on personal conversation, and says Anderson is trying to guide TED toward a more liberal and open minded agenda, but that it may be a more uphill battle than those of us not grappling with the modern day woke organizational dynamics can appreciate. I do not know - but I always appreciate context.
Man: I’m proud to be a paying subscriber, Coleman. You lay out your case well. But regardless of any of your claims being right or wrong--and I believe them to be right--this never should have happened to begin with. It’s amazing how illiberal so-called liberalism has become. How did we get to this place, where colorblindness, something stringently advocated for my MLK, is seen as racist? It’s insane!!! The fringe left has lost its freaking mind. Of course we need viewpoint diversity! All ideas should be allowed. If you don’t like an idea: present the counter to it on the next Ted talk! But don’t stifle the free and open exchange of ideas. This sounds like Venezuela or something. Nuts.
A congeries of crappy studies does not constitute a valid meta-study any more than anecdotes constitute data.
I did read the constituent studies -- in fact, I had read most of them previously. Some were stunningly poor. Moreover, there was a problem with terminology differing among them. As the disagreement between you and Chris demonstrates, people can have very different definitions of a term like "multiculturalism."
BTW, I regret that I did not define "multiculturalism" when I was on your podcast. My book actually draws a very strong distinction between "soft multiculturalism" (the kind you and I favor) and "hard multiculturalism" (the Chris and Kendi kind). Sadly, Diane Ravitch's wonderful term for hard multiculturalism-- "multicultural particularism"-- has fallen out of use.
This lamentable episode with TED reminds me of the way the NY Times fired James Bennett in the wake of internal pressure from some vocal staffers. I sense Chris Anderson does not like how it went with Coleman, but felt the heat of employee pressure and opted for institutional harmony over principle and fair-mindedness. I don't fully appreciate why the pressure of vocal staffers can be so overwhelming. The NY Times seems to have learned it's often best to push back against such pressure for the sake of the long-term institutional mission. I hope TED leadership learns the same.
Coleman- you are a national treasure and source of hope. Thank you for fighting the good fight.
What I really admire about Coleman is how clear his reasoning is. Obfuscation like that put forth by Chris Anderson and Adam Grant stands no chance against clear reasoning.
Coleman, I just looked at the X (twitter) storm and there are literally thousands of likes on the comments calling out the BS of Chris’ post (and only tens on the comments in support of it) which is reassuring for me and I hope for you, too. Hang in there.
Great last word, Coleman. And thank you for debunking the Grant meta analysis paper. I printed it out but did not have the fortitude to read it and so was withholding detailed judgement. But your careful read and summary here equates to ‘busted!’ Disappointing that social science does not hold itself to standards of intellectual rigor.
I'm really proud of you for standing up for yourself. I was dismayed by how many of your colleagues and supposed friends praised Chris Anderson and Adam Grant for their supposed civility. They refused to criticize Chris and Adam for trying to screw you over and violate their agreement. I also think they need to be criticized for trying to publicly discredit and humiliate you. If you remember, many of these same people had a problem with Chris Rufo pushing back against the woke in education. They refused to take action against the other side's action.
Dissection of the Leslie et al meta-analysis (part 2)
-- Did the meta-analysis actually find that color-blindness was not associated with what the authors define as elements of high quality inter-group relations?
No. What the meta-analysis DID find (a point noted by Hughes in his comments about Anderson’s Free Press comments) is that color blindness was significantly associated with lower levels of stereotyping and prejudice – findings entirely consistent with Hughes’ claims in his TED talk.
-- In that case, what about multiculturalism?
Like color-blindness, multiculturalism was negatively associated with lower levels of stereotyping and prejudice, and was also negatively associated with discrimination. The magnitide of these associations was larger for multiculturalism than color-blindness. However, far and away the biggest difference between color-blindness and multiculturalism is that the former was not positively associated with support for progressive diversity-related social policies whereas , whereas there was a strong association between support for those policies and belief in multiculturalism.
The findings regarding social policy support are not surprising. Indeed, it is essentially a defining feature of belief in color blindness that one would support treating everyone equally, without regard to the individual’s race, whereas a defining feature of belief in multiculturalism (as operationalized in the meta-analysis paper) is that one supports taking race into account as part of governmental and business and educational policies.
As was noted above, however, the authors of the meta-analysis have simply defined support for those kinds of policies as an essential component of “high quality intergroup relations”, but provide zero evidence that intergroup relations actually improve when organizations (whether business or educational or governmental) adopt these kinds of social policies. One might argue that it would have been just as reasonable (and consistent with evidence mentioned below) to have replaced “support for diversity policies” with “support for equality policies” as one of the “outcome” measures in the meta-analysis – in which case, it seems very likely that color-blindness would have emerged as having the strongest relationship with “high quality intergroup relations”. The decision by the authors of the meta-analysis to make support for progressive political policies one of their so-called outcome variables reflected a political value judgment on their part, and was not based on a scintilla of evidence (certainly not any that they provide).
-- Well, then – what about the quality of “intergroup relations”– the variable that is ostensibly the focus of the meta-analysis?
The four “outcome” variable included in the meta-analysis serve, within the analysis, as proxies for the quality of intergroup relations. However, very few of the studies surveyed included any more direct kind of measure of intergroup relations, and the authors of the meta-analysis seem very comfortable completely ignoring the absence of that evidence (evidence that would seem to be required for them to make the arguments that they make in the discussion and conclusion sections of the paper).
Ironically, given Grant’s and Anderson’s claim that the findings from the meta-analysis disprove the thesis of Hughes’ talk, it was Hughes who presented evidence more directly bearing on the question of the relationship between diversity ideologies and the quality of intergroup relations. Hughes presented the findings from a large scale survey (just one of a number of surveys that have shown the same pattern) showing that during the past 10-15 years, as the ideology of color blindness has been increasingly and prominently criticized within progressive media and in elite universities, ratings by both racial minorities and whites of the quality of intergroup relations has DECLINED. In other words, coincident with the decline in belief in color blindness and increased adoption of multiculturalism within society, there has been a decline, rather than an increase, in average ratings of intergroup relations. Neither Grant, nor Anderson, nor the authors of the meta-analysis, address this seemingly dramatic contradiction between their claims and what has actually happened in our society during the past one-to-two decades.
Deranged. Yes, that is exactly the right word to describe this madness. Coleman, thanks for fighting the good fight. Bless you. More power to you.
My own dissection of the Leslie et al. (2020) meta-analysis. Because of limitations on the length of comments, I'll break my essay down into multiple comments.
Does the Leslie et al. (2020) meta-analysis prove that Coleman Hughes was wrong?
Robert Guttentag
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychology
UNC Greensboro
Summary
I argue below that the meta-analysis suffers from several very significant shortcomings that should have been obvious to Dr. Grant. (i) The way in which the paper defines the elements of “high quality intergroup relations” is not based upon evidence of any kind, but instead reflects the progressive political philosophy of the authors, thereby baking into the design of the study the conclusions that the authors ultimately reached. (ii) The authors frequently draw causal conclusions from data which cannot be legitimately utilized as the foundation for a causal conclusion. (iii) In any case, the meta-analysis actually finds an association between color-blind beliefs and lower levels of prejudice and stereotyping. (iv) The claims by the authors of the meta-analysis (and by Grant and Anderson) notwithstanding, the study does not in any direct way assess factors contributing to “high quality intergroup relations”, and therefore it is unclear how the results of the meta-analysis actually bear on an assessment of the validity of the claims made in Hughes’ TED talk. Hughes, on the other hand, does provide evidence of a more direct kind supporting his claims regarding color blindness and intergroup relations.
What was the nature of the studies included in the meta-analysis?
The meta-analysis included studies that examined the association between one or more “diversity ideologies”, including “color-blindness” and “multiculturalism” (the two diversity ideologies relevant to assessing the validity of Hughes’ claims), and one or more “outcome measures” (scare quotes used here for reasons that will be made obvious in the next section) including prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and support for particular kinds of diversity policies. According to the paper’s authors, color-blindness “emphasizes minimizing the salience of [group] differences, specifically by ignoring them.” Thus, for example, if a professor grades student papers only after removing all student identity information from each paper, that would be classified as a color-blind approach to grading. According to the authors, multiculturalism, in contrast, “emphasizes acknowledging and valuing [group] differences.”
Most of the studies included in the meta-analysis were correlational studies that involved administering to participants measures of each individual’s belief in one or more diversity ideologies and measures of each individual’s placement on scales of prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and/or support for particular kinds of diversity policies. A minority (27%) of the studies were experimental in design, involving attempts to modify participant’s beliefs in diversity ideologies while assessing the effects of the change in beliefs on measure of prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and/or support for diversity policies.
1. The meta-analysis adopts a progressive political bias as part of its definition of “high quality intergroup relations”.
In the abstract of the paper, the authors refer to their focus on “4 indicators of high quality intergroup relations—reduced prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and increased diversity policy support. Thus, as part of their DEFINITION of “high quality intergroup relations”, the authors include support for what are generally considered to be politically progressive social policies, such as affirmative action, reparations, and granting citizenship automatically to the children of illegal aliens. It is apparently simply a part of the authors’ own political beliefs that support for what are generally considered to be politically progressive social policies is a component of or prerequisite for “high quality intergroup relations”. At a minimum, the authors should have cited actual evidence for this claim. They did not.
2. Correlation does not equal causation
Given that 73% of the studies included in the meta-analysis involved a correlational design, and given that the findings from correlation studies tell us little if anything about causation, the ability of the findings from the meta-analysis to draw strong causal conclusions is highly limited. The authors of the meta-analysis openly acknowledge the limitations of correlational studies, but still slip frequently into the use of causal language when describing results that are based heavily on the findings from correlational studies. Indeed, the simple labeling of discrimination, prejudice, stereotyping and support for diversity policies as “outcome measures” presupposes a particular direction of causation. Throughout the abstract, and in many places throughout the body of the paper, the authors refer to “the effects of” diversity ideologies, implying quite directly that ideologies have causal effects on the so-called outcome variables. Not only is it the case that such conclusions cannnot be conclusively drawn based upon correlational findings, but in at least one of the papers included in the analysis, the authors of the paper specifically argue for a reverse direction of causation (arguing that a so-called “outcome” measure is the real causal variable while adoption of a form of diversity ideology is the “effect”).
The meta-analysis does include the analysis of some experimental studies as well, and drawing causal conclusions is more firmly grounded when based upon evidence from such studies. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide separate analyses of the correlational vs experimental studies, so little can be said about how strongly the experimental findings support the overall conclusions of the paper. What the authors DO say, however, is that they lack sufficient evidence to determine “whether the effect of diversity ideologies on intergroup relations or the effect of intergroup relations on diversity ideologies is stronger”. Of course, the frequent use of causative language throughout the paper (references to the “effects” of diversity ideologies) is wholly inconsistent with the qualification quoted above. There should not have been ANY causal lanauge used when describing the findings from the meta-analysis, and it is surprising that Dr. Grant did not comment on that problematic feature of the meta-analysis paper.
Excellent case study of liberal (or is it progressive?) cowardice and bad faith.
Making your case in arguments like these requires clarity and persistence, which in turn takes intelligence and some courage too. The other side also showed intelligence and persistence. Anderson, in particular, showed ingenuity in what he chose to say and what to hide. What he didn’t show was integrity. Congratulations Coleman, I think you will be persuasive to those open to evidence. And congratulations too on calling a qualified halt to your engagement in the debate. How long to continue is a judgment call. Having read and listened to everything public, I didn’t need anything more on the table to make up my mind.
A forceful and entirely justified response! I found Grant's (and Anderson's) use of the 'meta-analysis' particularly disturbing, typical of the way elites try to bully us non-academics, to borrow a phrase from Glenn Loury, by using this kind of jargon-logged publication as a 'bluff and a bludgeon'. One question I missed in all this is: what was stopping the 'Black at Ted' people from formulating and expressing their own critiques publicly? How shameful that Anderson and co. had to step in and talk for them. So keep up the good work - know that your work is a great help to those of us who don't have the a lot of time and resources to fight this fight, but understand its importance.
This strategy of "let's do a study where the outcomes we desire are the only positive ones" seems to be rampant - Jesse Singal recently wrote about a study about trans young people that was touted as proving that early transition improved health outcomes. The outcomes they tracked were things like "body congruity" - and yeah, if you get your breasts removed, you will say that you no longer have as much distress about your chest, but that doesn't mean that it was actually a good outcome for the mental or physical health of the patient in the big picture.
I dropped out of college, in part because it seemed like the professors were sharing the truth they had already found, not encouraging students to find the truth. It sounds like it's gotten a lot worse in the last 20 years.
Now regarding Chris Anderson - if you can find Kmele Foster’s comments on this matter in the latest Fifth Column podcast, it’s worth listening to. In general he is entirely sympathetic to Coleman’s position. However he also has insight into Anderson’s motivations based on personal conversation, and says Anderson is trying to guide TED toward a more liberal and open minded agenda, but that it may be a more uphill battle than those of us not grappling with the modern day woke organizational dynamics can appreciate. I do not know - but I always appreciate context.
Man: I’m proud to be a paying subscriber, Coleman. You lay out your case well. But regardless of any of your claims being right or wrong--and I believe them to be right--this never should have happened to begin with. It’s amazing how illiberal so-called liberalism has become. How did we get to this place, where colorblindness, something stringently advocated for my MLK, is seen as racist? It’s insane!!! The fringe left has lost its freaking mind. Of course we need viewpoint diversity! All ideas should be allowed. If you don’t like an idea: present the counter to it on the next Ted talk! But don’t stifle the free and open exchange of ideas. This sounds like Venezuela or something. Nuts.
Michael Mohr
Sincere American Writing
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
You nailed the problems with the "meta study."
A congeries of crappy studies does not constitute a valid meta-study any more than anecdotes constitute data.
I did read the constituent studies -- in fact, I had read most of them previously. Some were stunningly poor. Moreover, there was a problem with terminology differing among them. As the disagreement between you and Chris demonstrates, people can have very different definitions of a term like "multiculturalism."
BTW, I regret that I did not define "multiculturalism" when I was on your podcast. My book actually draws a very strong distinction between "soft multiculturalism" (the kind you and I favor) and "hard multiculturalism" (the Chris and Kendi kind). Sadly, Diane Ravitch's wonderful term for hard multiculturalism-- "multicultural particularism"-- has fallen out of use.
This lamentable episode with TED reminds me of the way the NY Times fired James Bennett in the wake of internal pressure from some vocal staffers. I sense Chris Anderson does not like how it went with Coleman, but felt the heat of employee pressure and opted for institutional harmony over principle and fair-mindedness. I don't fully appreciate why the pressure of vocal staffers can be so overwhelming. The NY Times seems to have learned it's often best to push back against such pressure for the sake of the long-term institutional mission. I hope TED leadership learns the same.