Reflections on DEI at MacPhail Center for Music; An Open Letter to the MacPhail Community from a Former Faculty Member

Dear MacPhail leadership, Board members, faculty and staff, former colleagues and friends:

It’s been over two years now since my departure, but MacPhail is still often fondly in my thoughts, and I’ve continued to follow developments there. It is with some hesitation that I pen this letter. If I were still at MacPhail, I suspect that fear of negative personal and professional consequences may have kept me silent. It is precisely this point that motivates me to speak out now. I still care about MacPhail, and I write to give voice and encouragement to friends, former colleagues, and anyone else at MacPhail who might resonate with what I have to say.

Following the searing events of last summer—the harrowing public death of George Floyd in our city, the mass protests calling for racial justice and police reform, and the widespread violence and destruction—virtually every institution in America faced a seemingly impossible choice. MacPhail was no exception. To remain silent was to risk being publicly attacked for complicity with racism, or worse. To speak out was to risk being publicly attacked for being insufficiently zealous, or for failing to use the correct language.

Unsurprisingly, this chilling atmosphere produced an outpouring of eerily similar statements aimed at threading the perilous public-relations needle. The near perfect ideological conformity, the universal use of the same words and phrases, and the lockstep adoption of nearly identical “DEI” initiatives was uncanny. How could such a complex set of circumstances—circumstances that ought to have given rise to a vast range of expression in a free society—have produced something akin to a coordinated forced confession from our institutions?

I realize that by now questions may have arisen in the minds of some about my motives and commitments. So let me close the door to the most obvious concerns. I believe in equality. I believe that racism is real and that serious work still remains to extend the full promise of the US constitution to all citizens. I believe that racism is abhorrent and condemn it in the strongest terms. I am, in every meaningful sense, utterly opposed to racism. To paraphrase Dr. King, I believe that human value inheres in the content of a person’s character, not in the color of a person’s skin, or for that matter, in any other immutable characteristic or accident of birth. Throughout my life I have steadfastly lived out this commitment. Of that, anyone who knows me, anyone familiar with my family’s dissident history in apartheid South Africa, and anyone familiar with the racial composition of my own family today, can have no doubt.

Now, having chosen to express myself in these Enlightenment liberal, universalist, humanist terms—indeed, in the terms of all of the consequential and historic social justice movements—I can begin to bring my concerns into sharper focus. MacPhail’s response to the events of 2020, like that of almost every other institution, has strikingly not been expressed in universal liberal terms. Instead, MacPhail has embraced the language and ideas of the much newer “anti-racist” critical social justice movement.

In my view, this is a mistake because, despite the good intentions of many who sympathize with contemporary anti-racism, I sincerely believe it to be profoundly misguided and counterproductive. The proposed solutions seem all but guaranteed, not just to fail, but to do harm—to produce the opposite outcomes of those intended.

I believe the anti-racist movement makes precisely the mistakes that it sets out to alleviate. Most seriously, it reinvigorates arbitrary and superficial racial categories, and elevates the significance of those categories over our common humanity. It engages in racial essentialism. To be blunt, it is itself racist by the classical standard: anti-racism insists on imbuing racial categories with social significance and then seeks to discriminate on that basis.

Having subordinated common humanity to racial identity, the anti-racist movement makes yet another catastrophic error by replacing the universal liberal theory of progress with a new twist on the doctrine of Original Sin. It is no accident that the Columbia University linguist, John McWhorter, has dubbed the movement “the new religion of anti-racism”.

To the universal liberal, the end game—the dream—is clear. Dr. King said it best: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” It is a vision in which arbitrary immutable characteristics, like the melanin content of a person’s skin, steadily lose salience to the point of utter irrelevance, and only common humanity remains. The goal is clear, progress toward it can be measured, and the fight will eventually come to an end.

The anti-racist vision stands in dramatic contrast. As Robin DiAngelo would have it, racism is a permanent feature of all social interactions and the perpetual question is not whether racism occurred, but merely how it manifested. Or, in Ibram X. Kendi’s totalizing formulation, the world is starkly divided into the racist and the anti-racist, apparently without the possibility of nuance, and without the option of simply not being racist. In this view, every instance of disproportionate racial representation—lack of the acceptable level of superficial “diversity”—is diagnosed as racism, despite the fact that numerous racial minority groups significantly outperform, and the fact that group comparisons made along every conceivable non-racial line of social difference reveal nothing but disparities. At the level of the individual, things only become more Orwellian. DiAngelo gives us the diagnostic formula for racism: a person can enthusiastically admit to their racism, or, failing that, it can be deduced from their “silence, defensiveness, argumentation, withdrawal, certitude, and other forms of pushback”. To be white is to be guilty, and confession and continual atonement are the only acceptable options. The anti-racist project, therefore, is more like a medieval trial by ordeal than anything we might recognize from the universal liberal tradition. To get onboard is to commit to a lifelong program of increasingly intense and granular race consciousness, casting one’s net ever deeper and ever wider in search of racism always and everywhere.

MacPhail’s overt embrace of the contemporary anti-racist approach is unmistakable. It is most striking in the stridently anti-racist online orientation of MacPhail’s Senior Director of DEI. It is similarly clear from the choice of language and ideas woven through much of the content in MacPhail’s DEI-focused online spaces. This reality signals institutional disapproval of completely mainstream alternative perspectives, like that articulated here. Dare I say it, such perspectives may well be shared by a majority of the MacPhail community. Seeking to manufacture consent in this way ensures both a chilling effect within the internal conversation, and a high level of preference falsification among employees. It also threatens to alienate and exclude most of the general population, whose views are vastly more heterodox, and whose lives MacPhail presumably also hopes to transform through music. There cannot be art in such a narrowly ideological environment, only propaganda. There also cannot be true and equal relationships in such an environment, only expediency and suspicion.

I trust that I have adequately sketched out what I am opposed to, and, because I very much hope to be constructive, it follows that I have an obligation to propose an alternative. The principle of first, do no harm does eventually run up against what to do when circumstances call for action. So, to what degree do present circumstances call for dramatic action? Are we, as some would have it, in an ossified status quo that has permanently cemented historic inequalities? Is MacPhail a deeply racist institution?

I say, no. Ask yourself, honestly, doesn’t the degree to which MacPhail’s attention and resources have been captured by DEI not seem wildly out of step with the scale of whatever problems might exist there? As I stated earlier, as a society we have much work to do to extend the full promise of the US constitution to all citizens. By all means, let’s enthusiastically recommit to that project. But we have made unbelievable progress and, if anything—far from being a bastion of bigotry—MacPhail and the individuals that make up the MacPhail community have for years been a model of the very best in our society.

The magic of universal liberalism is that it is itself the antidote to a rigid status quo. By giving free speech and open debate primacy, problems are continually surfaced, new solutions developed, and a continual process of adaptation and innovation sustained. In this process, both the left and the right play their legitimate and vital roles; the left by pointing out problems and proposing solutions, the right by ensuring that the rate of change isn’t fatal. The dynamic is remarkably like evolution itself in which continual, gradual change is essential, but both no change and radical change are almost always terminal. Universal liberalism permits no status quo.

So, this is what I propose to you: that MacPhail pivot away from the divisiveness of anti-racism and recommit to the unifying principals of universal liberalism—the same principles that overcame the odds with slavery, segregation, apartheid, women’s rights and gay rights. Stop institutionalizing the tenets of critical race theory and return to focusing on musical and pedagogical excellence for all. Recommit to treating everyone in the MacPhail community and beyond equally, without regard to race, gender, or any other immutable characteristic. Recommit to fighting for radical equality of opportunity. Recommit to fostering an atmosphere of total freedom of expression, the ultimate fuel for creative production, and of individual and social thriving.

And, since I earlier cautioned against following the high priests of the new religion, let me suggest specific alternatives here, too. The talent pool is deep, but three refreshing voices would vastly enrich the conversation: Chloé Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams and Coleman Hughes would all be phenomenal guest speakers, and professional development resources.

In writing, I am not claiming that I see the whole picture or have all of the answers. I have simply tried, honestly and forthrightly, to fill a conspicuous gap in the conversation, and thereby to encourage others to bring forward the vitally important pieces of the puzzle that they may hold, however imperfectly.

Two very different potential paths lie ahead. Please, think long and hard about which is the right one for the institution—and the country—you love.

Hanno Strydom
MacPhail Cello Faculty, 2008–2018

P.S. I would be delighted to continue this conversation with anyone, either by email, over the phone or in person. You can reach me at hannostrydom@gmail.com