Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and entrepreneur best known for his role in the “PayPal Mafia,” Palantir and Facebook, is coming to campus on Tuesday evening to speak about diversity and the state of American higher education. Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen is hosting Thiel’s lecture as part of his seminar on “Liberalism and Its Discontents.” He tweeted that the event is open to all tri-campus community members, and others can email him for tickets.
Thiel, a towering figure in Silicon Valley, has supported conservative and libertarian causes throughout his career and spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention before ultimately serving on former President Trump’s transition team. Thiel co-wrote a book called “The Diversity Myth” in 1995 about the “climate on intolerance” on campus at Stanford University. In a speech last year on the book, he reflected on the idea. “You don’t have diversity when you gather people who look different but talk and think alike. It’s not enough to hire the extras from the space-cantina scene in Star Wars,” he said.
Deneen met Thiel in Washington, D.C., when he was speaking there a few years ago. “I think Thiel is really hard to categorize,” Deneen said in an interview. “I think one thing we share in common is a real concern about the kind of trajectory of the modern university.”
He added that both men share a concern about DEI administrators in universities. “I think we’re both critics of what now passes as the kind of new faith or new faith that is not being sufficiently explored, which is the faith of diversity, equity and inclusion. No administrator will define clearly and unambiguously what they mean by diversity and why it is justified,” Deneen said.
Thiel’s lecture coincides with an event held on the same day featuring Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in conversation with Alex Stein, a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. The two will discuss competing approaches to legal interpretation, according to an email sent to law school students, faculty and staff.
Peter Breen contributed to this report.
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