When is diversity the same as ethnic cleansing? When the Radical Religious Right says so.

Fox News commentator Todd Starnes is outraged by the president of Western Washington University’s deliberately provocative comment, which he has made at each of the school’s past six opening convocations, that “if we are as white in ten years as we are today, Western will have failed as a university.”

The president, Bruce Shepard, was referring to the fact that even though Western is a public university, its student body is disproportionately white compared to Washington state’s racial and ethnic composition and that diversity will improve students’ educational experience.

In his daily radio bulletin yesterday, Starnes said that Shepard’s statement is in fact a sign the university is embarking on an “ethnic cleansing” of white people.

• Right Wing Watch