Many years ago now, when I was an English TA at the U of New Mexico, a very conservative Catholic Hispanic student complained about the religious themes in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel, Ceremony, which we were reading (a novel that takes place in NM, of course). When we sat down to discuss this with the FE director, I pointed out that we had also read Gerard Manley Hopkins and Flannery O’Connor, both Catholics, and one a Jesuit priest, that semester. Also, the FE director herself was Catholic and pointed out that his views were not universal even among Catholics. Sufficiently intellectually diverse was the unstated conclusion. I prevailed.

Of course, there is an implicit problem in the legislation: how much diversity is enough, if diversity is potentially infinite?

Indiana Law Requires Professors to Promote ‘Intellectual Diversity’ or Face Penalties