Dissent will not be tolerated.

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

These three declarations, together, form one of the slogans of English socialism (Ingsoc) in the Oceania of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Along with Newspeak, they are designed to eliminate dissent by eliminating the very possibility of thinking dissenting thoughts.

I couldn’t help but recall those Orwellian words while reading about the student government resolution at Iowa State against admitting Brigham Young University to the Big 12 athletic conference.  BYU’s Honor Code offends against the sensibilities of the student officers who sponsored and approved the resolution.  The passage of the resolution aligns Iowa State’s student government with the campaign against BYU’s admission that was launched last month by a coalition of homosexualist organizations.  They are, they say, fighting for diversity.

It occurs to me that, were Orwell alive today, he might easily have added a fourth declaration to his list:

Uniformity is diversity.

While, of course, diversity in skin color is important to many modern ideologues, and while diversity of genders and gender preferences is celebrated and is regarded as absolutely non-negotiable (sexuality, sexual autonomy, and sexual expression being the holy trinity for many moderns), diversity in thought and ideas seems not only unimportant but quite repellent to them — especially, sometimes, at universities (where naïve thinkers might have expected intellectual liberty to be treasured).

Conformity is variety!