These days, when an organization has nothing to say but feels the need to say something, it’s likely to blather away about the need for “diversity” in some respect. That’s the case with the American Council on Education (ACE), which has released a report recommending that we choose a more “diverse” bunch of people to serve as college presidents.

In today’s Martin Center article, Grace Hall examines this foolishness.

She writes: “ACE recently released its latest American College President Study (ACPS), the ninth iteration of the report and the first since 2017. The self-declared goal of the ACPS is to ‘capture important data on [college] presidential demographics, search and selection processes, career trajectories, and duties and responsibilities—with a focus on the intersectional lenses of race and gender.’”

The basic idea, of course, is that the ranks of all college presidents should somehow “represent” America, but we have far too many old, white men leading our colleges and universities. According to ACE, things would be much better if only we could replace many of them with people of color and women. So if you’re a college trustee facing the need to select a new president, don’t look for the best candidate — look for someone who will “improve” our overall statistics on college leadership.