The Diversity We Are Missing Today

In of his new book, Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy, Jeffrey Garton writes about the meetings at Camp David on August 13 to 15, 1971, when Richard Nixon and small group of advisers¹ broke the link between gold and the US dollar (i.e., “closing the gold window”), instituted wage-and-price controls, and more.²  In describing the meeting Mr. Garton emphasizes there was a real diversity among those present.  It was not, course, a diversity of race or sex.  They were all white men.  (It was, after all, 1971.)  But there was a diversity of viewpoints.  Coming into the meeting, some opposed wage-and-price controls (President Nixon had always opposed them because of his experience in the Office of Price Administration in 1942); some were okay with them.  Some thought we needed to close the gold window immediately; others wanted to do the rest of the program and then wait and see.  The investment tax credit, which had recently been repealed, was to be reinstated.  The key was that a number of people with different viewpoints met, talked, and in a weekend came up with a set of policies to change the world economic system.³

This diversity, the diversity of viewpoint, is the diversity we ignore today.  When people talk of diversity, they tend to mean race, sex, national origin, etc.  Which too often results in a group that is diverse in everything except views.  On the left, for example, it seems that diversity means a Black female progressive, a Hispanic male progressive, a gay or lesbian progressive, and a few others of varying race, national origin, and sexual orientation, but all of them progressive.  Which means the diversity you have is a Black female progressive view, a Hispanic male progressive view, an LGBTQ progressive view, etc.  Different races, different sexes, but all progressive.

Which misses what may be the most important diversity and the one we too often ignore today: diversity of views.
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¹ Among those present at the meeting were John Connally (Secretary of the Treasury), Arthur Burns (Chairman of the Federal Reserve),  George Schulz (Director of the Office of Management and Budget), Paul McCracken (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers), Paul Volcker (Treasury Under Secretary for Monetary Affairs), Peter Peterson (head of the Council on International Economic Policy), Herbert Stein (member of Council of Economic Advisers), and William Safire (speechwriter).  (William Safire, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House {1975}, p. 511.)
² I have not had a chance to read the book yet, but I listened to Mr. Garten's discussion of it in this podcast.
³ See Before the Fall, pp. 509-528.