Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and one-time adviser to President Donald Trump, is renewing his argument that there are more serious issues facing society than debates over diversity and identity politics.
(Bloomberg) — Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and one-time adviser to President Donald Trump, is renewing his argument that there are more serious issues facing society than debates over diversity and identity politics.
At a New Criterion event in New York on Thursday, the polarizing Republican megadonor, who has backed hard-right candidates that have leaned into the culture wars, gave an address titled “The Diversity Myth,” a version of which is set to appear in the June issue of the conservative arts and ideas magazine.
Before an audience of about 250 people that included Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Eagle Capital Management co-founder Ravenel Curry and Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, he called diversity debates a “divertissement” and “a giant machine to redirect our attention.”
Thiel likened them to “a magic show in which one focuses on the magician and doesn’t notice the gorilla jumping up and down at the back of the stage.” He spoke standing at a podium, dressed in a tuxedo, flanked by huge sprays of flowers in a marble- and fresco-filled Gilded Age ballroom designed by Stanford White.
“This is not to say these debates do not matter, but when you make it the only thing, you’re somehow losing the sense of the matter,” said Thiel, 55, the PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor with a net worth of $8.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
One topic he’d like to see more focus on is inequality, he said, citing the examples of increasing rents in cities and rising tuitions at universities.
The address came almost three decades after Thiel — who was working at Credit Suisse at the time — published “The Diversity Myth” with David Sacks, based on their years at Stanford University in the 1980s and 1990s.
Looking back on the book, which argued that Stanford was changing to reflect the experiences of non-Whites and non-males, Thiel said it stands the test of time. (He didn’t mention a description of rape as “seductions that are later regretted,” which he apologized for in 2016.)
“I still think almost every argument I made was right,” he said, which he finds both “validating” and “depressing,” because “somehow we didn’t make a dent in the argument. It did not make a difference.”
Indeed, from his point of view, the embrace of diversity has become more entrenched since he wrote the book.
“It’s like some kind of idol or false god that we’re worshiping,” Thiel said. “It’s really hard to define. The important thing is that people are encamped at the altar of diversity and venerating and honoring this thing as the highest thing and making it the highest value.”
The event at the Metropolitan Club raised $500,000 for the magazine. New Criterion’s editor and publisher Roger Kimball, presented Thiel with its Edmund Burke Award, citing the stipends he gives for college students to leave school and work at improving society.
–With assistance from Biz Carson.
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