There are a lot of poorly thought out initiatives that have recently made their way through Congress, but not many herald the United States’ gradual transformation into a third world country quite so much as the idea of instituting a gender quota in the sciences, as reported in The New York Times.

It isn’t so much the quota itself that is detrimental as the idea that strict numeric equalization is more important than building a scientific structure that functions well. However, the quota itself will also do a great deal of damage: Women are shunning science and mathematics because, for one reason or another, most of them lack interest in those subjects. Instituting a quota will jam women into a structure to which they feel no affinity, which can only end poorly. Furthermore, because the fact that they are female now counts as a qualification, less qualified female candidates will now have free passes into a system which has historically held a very high standard of admission, potentially undermining the system by flooding the scientific establishment with yet more mediocre scientists.

Finally, I have a somewhat unique angle on this myself, being in the process of starting a university: every additional requirement placed upon selection of students will interfere further and further with the primary purpose of my organization: education. The more legislative barriers I need to surmount, the less I can focus on the goals that actually matter.

While I seek to start my institution in the United States, I am amenable to locating it elsewhere should the USA continue to recklessly hurl itself into the third world. By even considering this measure, this country demonstrates that its policymakers consider political correctness above reason in the one area in which reason counts most. Barred from the support of reason, science will wither, and, due to the pace at which science moves, the balance of world power will shift within the span of a decade.

If this is what the government wants, they will achieve it. More power to them if they finally succeed at mirroring the depravity of their inner visions on the external world. But I don’t have to stay to watch it.