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PETER THIEL TELLS BLACK-TIE NYC AUDIENCE THAT DIVERSITY IS A DISTRACTION
* The tech billionaire says society faces more serious issues
* He calls diversity ‘a giant machine to redirect our attention’
Peter Thiel accepts an award, plus books, from New Criterion Editor and
Publisher Roger Kimball.Photographer: Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg
By
Amanda L Gordon
+Follow
April 28, 2023 at 5:29 PM GMT
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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 by Biz Carson
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