It’s interesting. I took some classes on this and there is research showing the value of diversity in problem solving. [0]

But making the leap that this somehow means that skin/gender diversity equates to higher performance is quite a leap.

The instructor’s argument went something like this. “A bunch of studies show diversity improves outcome. A bunch of studies show people are racist against these populations. Therefore since having more of this population increases diversity, we need program XYZ.”

The class was infuriating, because the instructor kept using these studies as evidence and then directly linking it to a call for increased representation through positive discrimination for a few select minorities. Many questions were flippantly dismissed as “they’ll get their turn.” Of course this frustrates the different minorities who also wanted to be included.

I never got stuck on the logical leap of “If A then B. If C then D. Therefore A = D.”

[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10726-011-9250-x