In my post yesterday about demands for "non-competitive", "gender-balanced" science, I omitted to quote Kathie Olsen, deputy director of the National Science Foundation:

“our goal is to transform, institution by institution, the entire culture of science and engineering in America, and to be inclusive of all—for the good of all.”

"Inclusive of all - for the good of all" is the way forward, going forward. Has Kathie Olsen, who has been taking lessons in name-spelling from Jacqui Smith, any idea what this means? A team of surgeons could include somebody who couldn't pass his medical exams, and a football team could include someone with no legs. How is this "for the good of all"? How is it for the good of anyone, except "diversity officers"?

I was put in mind of Rod Liddle's evisceration of an inclusivity-and-diversity-driven recruitment poster for the London Olympics. The Olympic Games doesn't really go in for inclusivity. Its motto, altius, citius, fortius ("higher, faster, stronger") suggests that some people are better than others; they need to get with the programme:

The games have traditionally been an appallingly elitist and singularly competitive tournament of a somewhat exclusive nature. Certain people, unfairly selected on the shallow basis of their physical prowess, run, jump and throw things and the people who do best are rewarded while those who do poorly are labelled failures.

[...]

There was a huge advertisement in the Sunday Times last weekend from the various quangos set up to run the Olympics, under the meaningful and powerful headline ‘Together’. The photograph at the top of the ad showed some British schoolchildren running across a playground, with great determination. Importantly, none of the children was what we might call ‘white’, which is good. I think we’ve seen and heard quite enough of white children, haven’t we? The only justification for having white children in the photograph would have been to have them apologising to the black children for thousands of years of slavery and cultural and military imperialism. Perhaps, the photographer was telling us, by omission, that the horrible white children had typically refused to apologise.

Anyway, the non-white youngsters pictured seemed to be engaged in a race of some kind but, commendably, there was no suggestion that any one of them was going to win: it was plainly the taking part that counted. The little African girl was neck and neck with the little Iranian or Turkish boy; a Chinese girl and a Jamaican girl followed a short distance behind them — but only because they’d exercised their right, as is only fair, to begin the race a moment or two after the others had started. It is an authoritarian lunacy to suggest that everyone should begin a race at the same time. There are vitally important cultural factors to bear in mind; the adherents of some faiths find it invidious even to stand alongside the adherents of other faiths, for example, and should not be required to do so, in case they start punching one another. Also, some races do not have a Eurocentric, strictly linear concept of time; they navigate by the shifting shadow of the sun and the subtly nuanced elision of the seasons. The sharp crack of the starting pistol is an anathema to them, as it should be to us.