Highlights of the highlights:
1. UCLA Professor Sylvia Hurtado said — as paraphrased by the UW student newspaper — that universities "must place student identities at the center of diversity initiatives... revise their practices to accommodate students’ various identities, and employ more advisors and caseworkers whenever possible."
2. Columbia University Professor Donald Wing Sue talked about "microaggressions" (which was a topic on this blog a few days ago here). Sue said: "When you are unaware of what the dynamics are and you do not have a critical race consciousness, you can not facilitate a dialogue."
3. UW Diversity Planning Committee seeks to be "a resource for the state" and also to have "the people of the state be a resource for us."
4. How to get more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields? There are FIGs (First-Year Interest Groups) and Mathology Boot Camp and BioHouse and Bio-Commons.
5. Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell said: "If we are truly to be serious about diversity and creating a diverse environment... Then we must have a diversity plan.”
October 22, 2013
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revise their practices to accommodate students’ various identities, and employ more advisors and caseworkers whenever possible
How does coddling the students serve their interests in the future?
I understand how it might increase student retention (and therefore maintain the all-important $tudent aid dollar$), but in the long run, does infantilizing the student body help? I think not.
I consider one of the students in my class. Rarely shows up, does very poorly on assessments. I have to wonder why she is in college, and how she is paying for it.
So they want to raise tuition because they want to add even more administrative staff?
I was reading The Belmont Club yesterday, and this was an excerpt from an article from last year:
Recently the Portland Public Schools spent half a million dollars determining that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were racist, the bigoted product of “rugged individualism” and that to counteract this, it was necessary to embark on a diversity program so everyone did things exactly same way.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Dr. Verenice Gutierrez, a principal with Oregon’s Portland Public Schools, has become convinced that America’s “white culture” negatively influences educators’ world view and the manner in which they teach their students …
“What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” asked Gutierrez, according to Portland Tribune. “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”…
In addition to teaching that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are racist, PEG trains educators to view “rugged individualism,” “adherence to rigid time schedules,” and the belief that “hard work is the key to success” as traits of the dominant white culture.
PEG teaches that minority cultures value “color group collectivism,” “interdependence,” group success, shared property, learning through social relationships, and making life choices based on “what will be best for the family or group.”
Where does "diversity of thought" rank? Now that would be an interesting topic.
1. UCLA Professor Sylvia Hurtado said — as paraphrased by the UW student newspaper — that universities "must place student identities at the center of diversity initiatives... revise their practices to accommodate students’ various identities, and employ more advisors and caseworkers whenever possible."
Translation: we must use you chumps as an excuse to hire more people like me, at the cost of driving your tuitions up even further.
2. Columbia University Professor Donald Wing Sue talked about "microaggressions" (which was a topic on this blog a few days ago here). Sue said: "When you are unaware of what the dynamics are and you do not have a critical race consciousness, you can not facilitate a dialogue."
Translation: WE only listen to other race-baiting imbeciles like ourselves.
3. UW Diversity Planning Committee seeks to be "a resource for the state" and also to have "the people of the state be a resource for us."
Translation: The first is a lie, the second is the truth. We want to squeeze the people for more tax dollars, without ever providing anything of value.
4. How to get more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields? There are FIGs (First-Year Interest Groups) and Mathology Boot Camp and BioHouse and Bio-Commons.
Gosh, how about ending "affirmative action", thus making it so the "underrepresented students" who get in are actually intellectually capable of doing the work?
5. Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell said: "If we are truly to be serious about diversity and creating a diverse environment... Then we must have a diversity plan.”
Hey, let's make it a Five Year Plan. After all, we know how well that worked in teh USSR, and we're all Communists here, right?
Gobble,gobble,gook,gook, squaaawk!!!
"Student identities" is prog code for non-heterosexuals and leftists. Christians, heterosexuals and non-leftists need not apply as they are oppressors and don't count as Authentic Voices. But, they can attend class as long as they keep their mouths shut and their heads down.
"critical race consciousness" is Prog speak for institutionalized Liberal White Guilt.
"Microaggression" is just another lefty excuse to play the victim.
The Diversity Planning Committee" has no legal authority to do what they claim they are supposed to do. Nor do their ideas improve anything, despite repeated claims.
Progressive Campus "Diversity" is racist bullshit that favors non-whites over whites and females over males, so this conference is just Diversity Bullshit on Stilts with a Sparkler Jammed up its Ass. Is that too long for a tag?
"Diversity" is just leftwing authoritarianism and thought policing.
I think I see what I call a "TRO" here.
Tuition Reduction Opportunity.
I've got a diversity plan: The university may not hire any non-Republicans until the professors "look like America". IOW, they must have the same % of right wing fundamentalist evangelical Christians as does the nation as a whole.
"If we are truly to be serious about diversity and creating a diverse environment..."
A five minute walk on the UW-Madison campus proves it to be already very diverse in ethnic background. It's the most diverse place in Wisconsin. What kind of diversity are they trying to be more serious about?
What kind of diversity are they trying to be more serious about?
The kind that brings in more dollars, euros, yen, yuan and pesos to the Diversity Dean's office.
The microaggressions that a boy named Sue faced did not toughen him up sufficiently to face down the microaggressions he encountered as an adult. I blame the parents. So long as they continue to name their offspring Sue, this problem will continue.
All thats missing is a quote from Margaret Dumont.
arrrggghhhh....that's not thats
Regarding Professor Hurtado, all I can think is "yup, universities need to hire more people into administrations because that will lower tuition and make college educations more affordable for poor kids and let them start life with lower indebtedness." Of course, there may be some sort of question mark about how the former accomplishes the latter. Perhaps Prof. Hurtado plans on taking a major cut in pay?
One way to eliminate microaggressions is to eliminate the silly sensitivity that turns ordinary daily interactions into microaggressions and aggregates them into major grievances. Has Prof. Wing Sue considered that possibility?
How to get more "underrepresented students" into STEM? Try challenging them when they are K-12. My experience as the father putting two white sons through the much-vaunted Fairfax, Virginia, school system is that white boys (and Asians of both genders) have to work at STEM classes to get good grades and get used to working hard. White females and minorities get more positive feedback for less real effort Apparently (as I've deduced from reading the Fairfax County Public School system take-home materials) this is so they can feel good about themselves relative to STEM. Eventually reality strikes. As for me, I'd rather drive across a bridge that I know was designed by a civil engineer who learned to work at getting the right answer, rather than an engineer who was passed through the system to feel good about himself or herself. Just sayin'
"If we are truly to be serious about diversity and creating a diverse environment... Then we must have a diversity plan.” Start worrying about finding and educating the best and the brightest. The possibility that a white male from Appalachia who shows real promise might be more important to bring into the college than the daughter of a black multimillionaire who has glided her way through private school, that wouldn't resonate with Vice Chancellor Bazzell. Much easier to look at skin color and "high cheek bones."
"How to get more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields?"
The good news is that "unrepresented groups" are over-represented in STEM fields on TV shows. Doesn't that even things out?
How to get more Hispanics in basketball? How to get more blacks in water sports. How to get more East Asians playing football. These are the questions that keep me up at night.
gregq said...
1. UCLA Professor Sylvia Hurtado said — as paraphrased by the UW student newspaper — that universities "must place student identities at the center of diversity initiatives... revise their practices to accommodate students’ various identities, and employ more advisors and caseworkers whenever possible."
Translation: we must use you chumps as an excuse to hire more people like me, at the cost of driving your tuitions up even further.
How else can they create career opportunities for otherwise unemployable "studies" majors? No one in their right mind would want to bring such a toxic person into their organization.
...
3. UW Diversity Planning Committee seeks to be "a resource for the state" and also to have "the people of the state be a resource for us."
Translation: The first is a lie, the second is the truth. We want to squeeze the people for more tax dollars, without ever providing anything of value.
Yes, we see people as our greatest resource. You know what we do with resources? We consume them!
Anyone confused about the wide gulfs between Americans can start by asking what is great and good about diversity?
What ever happened to assimilation?
Painful
Nobody stands up at these things and points out the obvious?
That's how I got out of them.
Point out that they're all acting like girls, and go from there.
Mind-numbing boredom and incomprehensible pseudo-intellectual jargon are two of the most effective weapons of leftists.
Love 1 and 2: Hire more people and make sure they think just like us.
"Microagression" is a nifty term--let no problem be so small that we can't convene a committee to punish somebody for it.
Mark Steyn was a treat yesterday. One can hope that Rush is sick today too.
(the other kev)
Remember, when you go broke on student loans, it's to subsidize idiots like these.
(the other kev)
Remember, when you go broke on student loans, it's to subsidize idiots like these.
The unit of morale in the 70s was the milligiveashit.
Discriminating by colors and other incidental features. There's a name for these kind of people. It is not at all complimentary. Well, that's what happens when reactive movements are incorporated for profit.
The STEM issue is in preparing minority students for STEM. Setting real expectations that STEM instructors grade objectively, and group hugs won't make your project bridge stand up or your code run.
Keeping minority STEM students is the secondary issue. Most can't cut it and bail for "blank" Studies.
The best way for UW to increase its STEM minority students is to start counting Yellow peeps as minorities... If that fails, count Jews in the mix. That's how to make your numbers :)
How to get more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields?
This seems the perverse flip side of the promise to raise all students above average.
At any point of time some racial, ethnic, or gender-identifying group of students will be underrepresented in STEM fields.
Every program to increase one group (assuming each group is discrete) must come at the expense of another. Things that add up to 100% are like that.
So the standard can never be reached.
How else can they create career opportunities for otherwise unemployable "studies" majors?
That's it, isn't it? They need to create a self-sustaining ecosystem.
Bring more marginal students into "studies" majors, then create jobs for them upon graduation. If new problems (like microaggressions) need to be created to feed the need for diversity managers, so be it.
It's perfect if diversity is considered a goal in and of itself.
"Microaggressions" are what these diversity kommissars perpetrate daily on students.
"universities must employ more advisors and caseworkers whenever possible."
More jobs for useless parasites and bullies.
This is so sad. I remember my father telling me that when he was at Columbia (Class of 1932), they had Jewish quotas -- they would admit only a certain percentage of Jews. If they allowed Jews in based on qualifications, said the administration, they would dominate the study body, and you couldn't have that! Not diverse, you know.
Then, when I was growing up in the '50's and '60's, everyone was saying discrimination is unacceptable! Don't judge applicants by race or ethnicity, judge them by their qualifications (Martin Luther King said something like that). It's abhorrent to exclude a qualified black or hispanic or female applicant just because of her/his race or ethnicity or gender.
Now, we have to hire all sorts of administrators to make sure we don't allow qualifications to interfere with the overriding goal of diversity. Tough luck for those Vietnamese and Indian and Chinese would-be engineers and scientists and mathematicians; they aren't the right color for the diversity we demand.
It's sad.
The diversity scheme treats human beings as commodities, which possess value based on preferred features. This is similar to the abortion scheme, which treats human life as a commodity (i.e. earned or selective value).
As for education, America spends more per student than any other nation, and produces a product sixth or seventh in the world. Also, the total education outlays must also include government programs, including advertising, which is deemed necessary to fill in missing knowledge or skills. The total outlay for education-related expenses is considerably higher than the per student spending typically cited.
Americans are getting fleeced by our government's policies and regulations. Their individual dignity is denigrated and their lives are devalued. It's a profitable scam and there is no evidence that it will end any time soon. If anything it is progressive (i.e. monotonic).
1. Hurtado wants more taxpayers' money to hire more useless bodies instead of better faculty who may threaten her job.
Students should take the money and go Travel with Charlie. There is a real world out there which cares more about your abilities than your unaccomodated identities.
2. Sue is a microaggressing ass.
3. The goal behind the Diversity claptrap is to produce hypersensitive hypo-capable unthinking humans to become "a resource (tool) for the state".
4. "Underrepresented students" have wasted their lives raging being microaggressed against, hyper-conscious of their unaccomodated identities to have time to go into STEM fields. Science is hard, man.
5. Replace the Chancellor with a diverse whatever.
This people need real jobs. We can no longer afford a legion of highly paid parasites.
"Microaggression," yeah.
Get a microsolution. Here's a nickel.
The twisted timber of humanity: Is it possible that diversity training is a microaggression against straight, white males?
Is Sylvia Hurtado the wise Latina in the group?
I actually enjoy these useful idiots and think we should push mandatory diversity training as a way to get more young people to abandon the Dem party. These are the same people that alienated me from the progressive movement when I was in college.
What a transparent scam. But truly hilarious as well, so I guess there's some value in it.
more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields?
Unless there is perfect proportional representation (which will never happen in any field without mandates and quotas) there will always be some race or ethnicity that's "underrepresented." How could there not be?
Although anyone who's looked into a science or engineering classroom at just about any American university surely must that the students in them are (mostly nonwhite) people from all over the world.
STEM fields do seem to be the most stubborn in maintaining meritocracies- perhaps that is what so offends the Diversity Apparat? For the preferred tools of attack have been claims that the concept of merit itself has no merit (because it's socially created/culturally determined).
As if we all can't see the merit in a bridge that does not collapse, or a Web site that functions as intended, or a theory with good predictive capability.
MayBee said...
How else can they create career opportunities for otherwise unemployable "studies" majors?
That's it, isn't it? They need to create a self-sustaining ecosystem.
Bring more marginal students into "studies" majors, then create jobs for them upon graduation. If new problems (like microaggressions) need to be created to feed the need for diversity managers, so be it.
It's perfect if diversity is considered a goal in and of itself.
Yes, that's the goal. In the military, this is called a "Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone". By that, I mean it's a program that exists in order to further the program rather than to meet actual needs.
So-called diversity departments are jobs programs for otherwise unemployable people. These people not only lack useful skills, they posses toxic attributes that make them highly undesirable to any employer with a functioning brain. Hire one of them and you're facing the near certainty of a lawsuit for whatever imagined offense they can dream up.
What's the end game here? Seriously? Is it all just a huge expression--meant only for the camp time that higher ed has become--of the core lunacy of Lefty-demia, manifested through a belief system no sane, functioning human of any color or orientation thinks about, ever? I'm baffled because I don't believe these people running this stuff believe a word of their hokum. So what's the end game?
"Is it possible that diversity training is a microaggression against straight, white males?"
Milliaggression, at least.
TML asked:
So what's the end game?
Perhaps you have some true believers who actually do believe this stuff. Stranger things have happened.
Perhaps it's a classic pyramid scheme where those who bought into the diversity racket early get the big bucks (grants, government jobs, department chair positions) while each succeeding level faces diminishing returns.
Or perhaps they have no conceivable end game because they can't imagine the diversity gravy train ever coming to an end.
I wonder if any of these academics knows that snake oil was originally brought to the U.S. by Chinese railroad workers.
They sure have packaged it beautifully in a brand-new bottle.
Let me guess, diversity still won't apply to political beliefs of faculty.
What a bunch of fucking leftard losers. These people are the human equivalents of cancer. They fester and destroy anything of value while propagating themselves until they've completely taken over and destroyed the host. These tumors need some serious radiation until they're destroyed. get rid of them all. they add nothing and destroy everything.
If they don't find jobs for their majors their departments will be cut. This is job retention.
Hi Prof,
You probably want to delete all the messages that say "hamad uzair said..." (and then this one :-) ).
If you ever have the chance to go to a convention of these folks be sure to do it. It's like attending a meeting of the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge. The straight women drink a lot and have a tendency to get alarmingly friendly toward the end of the evening. Kind of creepy but fun if you keep your wits about you.
The United State Supreme Court has the chance to end this racist diversity crap this term. It has the perfect case to do so out of Michigan. The 6th Circuit opinion is so incomprehensible that they have to reverse it. If the Court has the nerve, this will be the year that America finally puts Jim Crow behind it and becomes truly post racial. The power of the government to discriminate on the basis of race will finally be ended. The dream of the 14th Amendment (and Dr. MLK, Jr.)will be realized at last.
Probably won't happen. As with Obamacare, the Court does not have the courage to defend the liberties protected by the Constitution, no matter how compelling the law is or how much harm the nation is suffering.
It will be Plessy redux.
These are the philosophers and architects of the totalitarian state.
Big Mike,
"Perhaps Prof. Hurtado plans on taking a major cut in pay?"
All the way to zero, baby!
Last year, in response to rising tuition, University of WA had representatives of student government take a stab at reviewing the school's budget and making recommendations. My knowledge of what went on in that process is limited to what I read in the press, so I do take what I read with a little grain of salt.
But what those students came up with as one of their main points really surprised me: the group recommended more funds for counseling!
What the fuck? How do you accept an assignment to try and CUT costs...and come up with that? Like the first response here..I have to wonder: how much fucking emotional support do these kids need for christ's sake? If such an extensive network of support is required for the average college student...maybe we should keep them in high school another year, as they don't sound like young adults ready for college to me.
"Professor Hurtado"?? Really? Those truth in advertising laws are a bitch! Who is her co-author? Professor Whingivius Butt-Agony Complainant III?
By definition, 1 out of every 2 people has an IQ in the "double digits". These people have no business attempting most college disciplines., They cannot do it. period. However, they do have other talents, and if identified say before high school, and with the appropriate resources to develop those talents, they can have productive and financially rewarding lives doing something they like. The stuff that goes on now is cruel to the students and is really just welfare. They are being squeezed into a mold, alas not diverse from all the other molds.
"4. How to get more "underrepresented students" to go into STEM fields? There are FIGs (First-Year Interest Groups) and Mathology Boot Camp and BioHouse and Bio-Commons."
Apparently the answer is to have the parents use more words from 0-2 years old
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/language-gap-study-bolsters-a-push-for-pre-k.html?hp&_r=0
The end game is a new Tower of Babel: where a nation goes in reverse and breaks down into tribes, all with different languages, customs and beliefs.
And the real exciting part is that within a few generations, all these disparate tribes will begin to war with themselves.
I interview kids who want to get into MIT. Asian kids are a minority in the area. Yet they are grossly overrepresented in the MIT student body. Why? Interview a few and you'll find out:
1) Mom and Dad are married.
2) They had the kid after they got married.
3) Dad (at least, and likely Mom too) has a job, and was employed before they got married and before she got pregnant.
4) Their kid has no more than 2 siblings at the outside, commonly 1, occasionally none.
5) Academic achievement is heavily emphasized by the parents.
6) The kid does not participate in a school team sport (occasionally tennis or golf).
7) The kid may well have at least some exposure to music performance - but it will not be rap, rock and roll or pop, it will be something that requires practice and discipline.
7) Bad grades are not tolerated by the parents. Privileges disappear if a bad grade - defined as anything below a "B" - shows up on the report card. A "B" qualifies as a mediocre grade.
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