From "Denying a Professor Tenure, Harvard Sparks a Debate Over Ethnic Studies/Some students of color say that even as the university defends its use of race in admissions, it devalues their experiences and fails to retain professors who support them" (NYT).
The top-rated comment (by a lot):
It is entirely inappropriate for students to determine who at a university should be granted tenure. Tenure, especially at elite institutions, is supposed to be based on scholarly accomplishments, not the results of a poll about who is popular with students (much less with faculty or staff at other institutions).
It is also inappropriate for students to try to force a university administration to create new departments to address ethnic or gender studies. If these students wanted such majors, they should have picked institutions that offered them. Also, if they want jobs after graduation, they should think twice about majoring in subjects so trendy and insubstantial as ethnic/gender studies.
This is just another example of letting the inmates run the asylum.
Posts
135 comments:
Harvard is learning "If you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon."
America. Is. Doomed.
You can either listen to the band play as the ship goes down or start making your way to a lifeboat.
For a huge change I find myself agreeing with the top-rated comment on an article in -The New York Times.
Given the Harvard administration's recent history I am betting they will cave ( see resident dean, Winthrop House). I am still rooting for the Asians and remain convinced that Harvard's admissions practice should become color blind. In the past the "holistic policy" was only mildly dishonest ( once you accounted for legacies, athletes and others with special talents - and Jews, of course). The policy has become laughably dishonest regarding the Asians and it's time it stopped.
Leftist autophagy.
"It is entirely inappropriate for students to determine who at a university should be granted tenure. Tenure, especially at elite institutions, is supposed to be based on scholarly accomplishments, not the results of a poll about who is popular with students (much less with faculty or staff at other institutions).
It is also inappropriate for students to try to force a university administration to create new departments to address ethnic or gender studies."
LOL
Oh my. That is so very very quaint. How 1950's of him!!
That commenter better hope the Woke Crew doesn't get access to his/her/xer personal information.....
While we are on the topic of race based admissions the latest from England..
Two top English private schools have defended their decision not to accept a benefactor’s offer of scholarships for disadvantaged white boys.
Winchester and Dulwich colleges have declined the offer – reported to be worth over £1m – by a former pupil from both, Professor Sir Bryan Thwaites.
https://moonbattery.com/scholarship-nixed-for-group-that-most-needs-it/#disqus_thread
oh a real piece of work
https://scholar.harvard.edu/lorgiagarciapena/classes
"Diversity" is a steaming pile promoted by the college Left. They should strive for political or value-based "diversity," but instead they want "some" racial diversity (but asians need not apply) and uniformity of leftwing thought.
just a lefty activist, of little note,
Harvard routinely gives in to Leftwing Student demands. So it’s totally appropriate for these students to keep demanding what they want. Too late to give tough love to spoiled brats.
Children testing their boundaries.
this is the only paper they linked,
https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/almost-citizens-racial-translations-national-belonging-global-immigration-crisis/
A black kid could get a sweet job at a major corporation with a Harvard degree in black studies. In HR, that is. Good enough.
If they keep citing diversity, then conservatives should sue for teaching positions.
BTW, child, Harvard isn’t using your story. You are using your story like Liawatha to get into Harvard.
I am legitimately surprised that Harvard did not already have an ethnic studies department. I agree with the posted comment as well. Letting kids design a department, choose tenure for faculty, or perhaps worse of all design a syllabus for a course is a bad idea. Overall I think the worst damage in higher education over the last several decades has occurred in the humanities. The decline of study in the classics, European history, and American history is bad. It removes the ability of students to understand the grand arc of Western civilization, which even if they don't believe so, they are a part of. The pruning of 'Dead, white men" from the English canon, lessens a shared sense of identity and values with people in history and people who will come after. Also if a person has a university degree, with it should come a moderate amount of literacy in the Bible and the general story of Christianity. Christianity is an inseparable part of Western Civilization. And what has replaced these things in today's university? Ethnic Studies? Gedner Studies? Queer Studies? All sorts of grievance studies, that operate similarly in subsuming any individual and making that person's group identity their most defining characteristic.
narciso at 1:20 PM
https://scholar.harvard.edu/lorgiagarciapena/classes
How did she get a job teaching such classes at Harvard?
Who at Harvard is attending such classes?
And it’s not Harvard’s responsibility tell you more of your story.
The poster was correct. You chose poorly and probably too expensively.
How many different departments do these students want at The College of Grievance Studies?
Got Black Studies. Brown Studies. Women’s Studies. Gender Studies. Injun Studies. What else? Is Black Women’s Studies it’s own department? Or are professors have cross appointments in Black Studies and Women Studies?
And which Department has the most juice? Are all students at the U required to take Black Studies, Women’s Studies, and one elective among the remaining departments in the College of Grievance Studies?
the last time, they had a major temper tantrum like this, it was over derek bell, the one who wrote Obama's primers for his course at u Chicago,
This is just another example of letting the inmates run the asylum.
One of the things that continues to mystify me is how so many well read, educated, finacially successful, NYT reading progressives can hold so many views and poltical ideas that seem either idiotic or insane to me. They do things like vote for and give loads of money to candidates who are avowed socialists and wealth redistributers, promoting stuff like open border policies. Ideas like cancelling college debt, medicare for all ect... I could go on.
Despite all this they apparently have the wherewithal to occasionally recognize certain types of insanity as in the above case. It's weird.
It is also entirely inappropriate for readers to determine what a newspaper should write as a headline. News stories, especially those in elite newspapers are supposed to be based on facts, not the result of a poll of what is popular with readers:
New York Times changes front-page Trump headline ("Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism") after backlash.
Tenure, especially at elite institutions, is supposed to be based on scholarly accomplishments, not the results of a poll about who is popular with students (much less with faculty or staff at other institutions).
There are plenty of third and fourth quartile ranked colleges that do not require scholarship to achieve tenure. At those schools, popularity and "community involvement" are enough to earn tenure.
Students who want supportive, non-scholarly professors have plenty of options.
"Show us $15!" "Show us Ethnic Studies!"
Ethnic studies so they will know what their stories even mean? Yes, we are doomed.
Been saying it for years, and lived it at a public u in the South. Because of academic mismatch, we got some pretty marginal students even by our crummy standards. The worst part was that many were allowed to graduate thinking that they were twice as good as they actually were, and too many of those continued in academe, thinking they're any good at all.
Neither students nor admin are doing other than what serves their self interest of course.
Narr
No, I don't care that I wasn't selected as Deputy Assistant Vice Provost for Tedium and Twaddle/Special Populations. It was only $120k
Again it's a free country and a free market place both commerce and ideas. It's an adversarial system. Brown people are fighting back. Good. The reason this is even being discussed is because it is at the world's most elite University Harvard where every smart kid from around the world and their pushy parents want them to go.
narciso at 1:27 PM
https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/almost-citizens-racial-translations-national-belonging-global-immigration-crisis/
Harvard should be able to hire someone else who publishes better scholarly works than this.
The article's first two paragraphs:
Last summer, as I interviewed filmmaker Medhin Paolos in Milano, Italy, an African street vendor approached us. "Buy this!" he said in English, showing us silk embroidery. When Paolos brushed him off with a polite, "No, grazie," the vendor exclaimed with surprise: "Parla Italiano!" Since neither Paolos nor I looked white (enough) to be just Italian, the vendor explained, he had taken us both for American tourists. Paolos, who is used to explaining her Italian blackness to foreigners and locals alike, told the vendor that her parents were Eritrean. Making himself more comfortable on a table next to us, our new friend then added: "And you speak English too! A black person should always speak English." Joining in the conversation, I asked him why. He responded—in English— "Because black in English is better."
The vendor’s statement "black in English is better" calls attention to the ways in which language and cultural performances complicate our understandings of race. It also highlights the multiple ways in which dominant versions of race simultaneously contribute to promoting exclusion—Paolos could not possibly be black and Italian—and facilitating inclusion through participation in the global commodification of blackness. Before the interruption, Paolos and I were discussing the growing popularity of what has become known as the black Italian movement, a cultural and aesthetic drive led by the media and local politicians in their efforts to appear more inclusive to a young and intercultural European constituency. The marketing push for black Italianness employs U.S.-produced slogans like "black is beautiful" and showcases Anglicized terms like "nappy" as well as U.S. black pop cultural and historical references. Though black Italianness is appealing to a younger generation, it does not represent the reality of Italians di colori, to use a local term, because, as Paolos explained to me, "It’s not my blackness."
The top-rated comment (by a lot):
Perfect example of Robert Conquest's First Law of Politics: Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
This is why continuing affirmative action, electing a Black President, reparations, or any other such effort is doomed to failure. Victim-hood is the holy grail for a lot of people, not real equality. Victim-hood makes you better than equal, at least in the eyes of the losers, and we have a lot of losers. They will never be satisfied with equality. Equality means equal responsibility, and that's not the deal they want.
Under that system of students awarding tenure, I can imagine a lot of ways to get tenure that have nothing to do with education. Blowjob Tuesdays for one.
Harvard seems like that steakhouse in New York that serves shoe leather on a plate but douchey label conscious New Yorkers (not to be confused with Uber hip dissident New Yorkers like Florida Man Cookie) keep waiting in line and paying the price to eat it. Imagine sending your kid to Harvard and his roommate is David Hogg.
Maybe set aside the asinine notion ethnic diversity is, in and of itself, beneficial to an institution?
What could be more important than a privileged Harvard Blackie studying its own black ass?
Nobody Respects Harvard liberal arts professors. They're all left-wing wackos. Let the inmates run the asylum? Why not - when the asylum trustees are nut cases. And I love the Harvard attitude on race, which changes constantly depending on who's ethnic/racial ox is being gored. One minute, its all about diversity uber alles, and the next its all about pure academic merit. Why don't people call them out for it -Or at recognize its a scam?
In April, after Yale denied tenure to Latinx Studies professor Dr. Albert Laguna, García Peña wrote a piece for Asterix journal stating, “White supremacy in these institutions bleeds through the photos of white men which hang in the halls of the university, in the syllabi that privilege white cannon and lack any type of representation for people of color, and in the university’s inability to hire or retain black and brown faculty, in the university’s disavowal of Ethnic Studies as a legitimate field of knowledge.”
BTW, if Sanders/Warren really wanted "social equality" they'd get rid of the tax exemption for every private college with a trust fund over $1 Billion.
Per the link, her publication record is very very weak. Not surprised she didn't get tenure.
Tenure, especially at elite institutions, is supposed to be based on scholarly accomplishments, not the results of a poll about who is popular with students (much less with faculty or staff at other institutions).
Oh, please! While I'm not too thrilled at the idea of tenure based on "student popularity", the idea that tenure is based on some hi-falutin objective measure called "scholarly accomplishments" is completely disingenuous bullshit. It really doesn't help the case of universities when faced with such challenges from the students to pretend that butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. Even not-too-bright students see what's plainly in front of their faces!
they encouraged this temper tantrum, eight months ago,
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/30/letter-writing-garcia-pena-tenure/
But she's a named Associate Prof. Maybe she has tenure after all.
this is her counterpart at yale,
http://www.melissacastilloplanas.com/about-melissa.html
https://www.thecollegefix.com/academics-form-ethnic-studies-coalition-after-harvard-denies-tenure-to-latina-professor/
here we see the process involved, neither piece points out who they did hire,
The first black to graduate from Harvard: 1870 (Richard Greener)
The first woman admitted to Harvard: I dunno, 1940s or something. The ladies went to Radcliffe until 1977.
So, maybe the Left should try this argument in court: You Harvard fuckheads discriminated against blacks and women for over 2 centuries, so, now WE want to be the Harvard fuckheads discriminating against disfavored groups this century.
I really shoulda gone to law school.
narciso at 2:14 PM
https://www.thecollegefix.com/academics-form-ethnic-studies-coalition-after-harvard-denies-tenure-to-latina-professor/
There are consequences for Harvard's enrolling too many students who cannot and will not read at the university level:
[quote]
.... Numerous Harvard students responded by staging a sit-in early last month, with an estimated 50 individuals occupying the school’s University Hall on Dec. 2 demanding Garcia Peña be immediately granted tenure and that an Ethnic Studies program formed at Harvard. The next day, students protested a faculty meeting, holding signs reading “ethnic studies now,” “want diversity? teach our histories,” and “no justice, no peace.”
Students staged another rally less than two weeks later, this time occupying the school’s Office of Admissions and Financial Aid. The roughly 50 students who attended protested Harvard’s lack of an ethnic studies program.
In addition to the protests, Harvard students also wrote a letter supporting Garcia Peña and condemning the school’s denial of her tenure; the document garnered 200 student and 30 student groups’ signatures....
[end quote]
50 students, people
https://www.aaihs.org/black-scholars-respond-to-dr-lorgia-garcia-pena-tenure-denial-at-harvard/
she should run for the state legislature, it would be redundant, but it's more her wheelhouse,
I am shocked that was the top rated comment at the Slimes. I guess there is hope after all if their own readers are rebelling against Libtard Orthodoxy which clearly this comment violates
J. Farmer @1:04 said:
America. Is. Doomed.
You can either listen to the band play as the ship goes down or start making your way to a lifeboat.
I suppose that's a euphemism for becoming a grouchy old queen who spends his days posting multiple dyspeptic remarks on Althouse comment threads.
Further support for J. Farmer's conclusion that we're doomed:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/life-science-jobs-at-berkeley-with-hiring-giving-precedence-to-diversity-and-inclusion-statements/
This is far worse than a bunch of students complaining. It means the institutions are systematically denying entry to professors who are insufficiently woke.
This is part of the larger challenge for the Left, to ferment race and gender anger, but keep it aimed in the right direction at all times. You can all but hear them crying, "People, people, let's remember who the common enemy is: white guys!"
ABOLISH TENURE.
The Western Canon is still available online. These privileged characters want all the power to run the University to be placed in their hands... or else. Harvard should expel them all.
This is just another example of letting the inmates run the asylum.
Smart enough to get into Harvard.
Not smart enough to see the con for what it is.
It's a very fine line the admissions committee must walk.
Well, suppose you were a typical loser asshole, admitted to Harvard because of your racial identity. You look around at all these fucking White and Asian strivers, and you know your loser ass hasn't got chance zero! Unless ... unless. Unless you can somehow get them to make the academic criteria the same as the admissions criteria! Hell, worth a try!
Burn the place down, plow the land with salt. Let not one stone stand upon another.
Blast off and nuke it from orbit.
Dr. Raymond Stantz : Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect *results*.
Q.E.D.
Not everyone at Yale and Harvard is batsh!t insane. A 52 year old former SEAL enrolls as a freshman and discovers most students are open-minded and tolerant. Reminder that it is the marginal ones who are sucking out all the media ozygen
https://gen.medium.com/my-semester-with-the-snowflakes-888285f0e662
I work in a very prominent company in the STEM field. If I saw a resume with an ethnic studies major for any role at any company, I work for, even janitor, I would reject it, and that decision would be well-justified.
To get an idea of the "scholarship" of the tenure-denied Pena, I took a look at her biography which is brief enough that I've copied it below.
It consists of 6 sentences, five of which begin with the personal pronoun "I", with the remaining sentence beginning "My work". The third sentence is a bunch of gibberish enhanced by a spelling error.
The only way - the only way - she got a teaching position a Harvard is straight-up AA.
"I am a first generation Dominican Latinx Studies scholar from Trenton, NJ. I study blackness, colonialism and diaspora with a special focus on dominicanidades. I study literary and cultural texts in conversation with historical processes and following a methodology for archiving in justice that challenges the heteronormative, Eurocentric production of knowlege [sic] that has persistently excluded and silenced the lives, histories and epistemeology of black and brown people from traditional archives, libraries and books. My work is grounded on social justice, women of color feminism and Afro-Latinx episteme. I have a strong commitment to undocumented students, students of color, and first generation students. I followed a model of engaged scholarship that bridges gaps between university and community both in my research and my teaching."
https://scholar.harvard.edu/lorgiagarciapena/bio
@Roughcoat:
I suppose that's a euphemism for becoming a grouchy old queen who spends his days posting multiple dyspeptic remarks on Althouse comment threads.
Grouchy? Most certainly. Old? Eh, 37 isn't really "old." Queen? Hate to disappoint you, but I'm not and have never been one. Though I concede I do enjoy sodomizing beautiful men.
As for dyspeptic, yes, I am guilty as charged. Anyone who has been paying attention for the past 25 years or so and isn't dyspeptic, there probably isn't much I can do for them.
How would ethnic studies classes cover colonialism from the European perspective? In "The Case for Colonialism," Bruce Gilley argued that Western colonialism was both “objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate” in most places where it existed. Economists who have done (careful) cost-benefit analyses have also shown that European colonization was massively expensive (with virtually no benefits). So what of it? Are we happy with the blood and treasure we spent spreading Christianity and Western Civilization? Is the Third World the "White Man's burden"? And what about the humanitarian disasters that occurred under "our" watch? I'm not sure it was worth it...
Also, the ethnic studies professors are pure garbage. Most of them are Holocaust deniers!!!
How ever did those poor Jewish, Irish and German students that started getting admitted in the 30s through the 80s deal with a Harvard that had no Jewish, Irish or German ethnic studies professors or departments? We'll never know because they all flunked out and were forced to take jobs as janitors in the Biglaw, SCOTUS and medical office buildings.
In April, after Yale denied tenure to Latinx Studies professor
Is that from the catalog, Narciso?
I don't really understand what "Latin studies" would be (unless in the language department studying Latin)
I do know that latinx is a bogus word and an insult to all Spanish speakers.
What next "xe Mesx" Zhe pisx"?
Fuck these people.
John Henry
Michael: "Not everyone at Yale and Harvard is batsh!t insane. A 52 year old former SEAL enrolls as a freshman and discovers most students are open-minded and tolerant. Reminder that it is the marginal ones who are sucking out all the media ozygen"
Shorter: Mature and experienced and worldly trained Navy SEAL with multiple kills to his record enrolls at an Ivy and finds the soyboys unwilling to challenge him very much.
Filed Under: Unexpectedly.
A 52 year old former SEAL enrolls as a freshman and discovers most students are open-minded and tolerant.
He doesn't present as credible.
I challenge any of you hyper-opinionated zealots
To me there is no dishonor in being wrong and learning. There is dishonor in willful ignorance and there is dishonor in disrespect.
He demands respect but is actively disrespectful himself.
Here in the “Directed Studies” program, instead of “tuning in” to our favorite self-confirming “news” source
So people not in his group are didn't arrive at their opinions through reason but through illegitimate methods.
Now before you think I’m preaching, please know that I come from a place where I was distinctly the opposite of this ideal. I looked for reasons to disregard the opinions of those I didn’t respect.
I've got some news for you James, you're still doing it.
I’d like to count this as my first brick in attempting to build a bridge between the people here at Yale and those like me before I arrived here.
You think you're building a bridge to people you just insulted throughout your essay? Like so many supposed "bridge builders" he believes the bridge exists only to help others come to his positions.
I'm surprised that the most respected academic journals don't solve the diversity in academia problem by having a quota that each volume of the journal must contain a certain percentage of articles authored or co-authored by an African American. Academic departments would rush to hire, retain, and promote African American professors because of their excellent publishing records.
this is CRAZY!
IF we're Not going to let students decide tenure; What's Next?
Making students study?
Assigning Grades?
Let's get a handle on this while we can! The PURPOSE of school, is to collect tuition, not educate
BTW, child, Harvard isn’t using your story. You are using your story like Liawatha to get into Harvard.
If you need a new program to teach you "your" story, perhaps it isn't really your story.
solve the diversity in academia problem
like Most things; Robert A Heinlein solved this one a LONG TIME AGO
Problem:
College Graduates are more successful than non College Graduates (which isn't FAIR!)
Solution:
Issue Degrees to all Citizens (Residents) of your state (country)
Once ALL people have college degrees, any differences disappear
Where university students pay their own tuition (either out of pocket or via student loan), they should have a say in what programs/courses are offered. Presumably they're adults, and if they they value gender/ethnic studies enough to spend their savings/future income + interest, then so be it.
"This is just another example of letting the inmates run the asylum."
Well, it's a little late to complain about that. I mean, Ethnic Studies Inc. got going some 50 years ago.
In the Age of Greta, progs gladly take orders from the inmates.
Gilbert Pinfold said...
Dr. Raymond Stantz : Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect *results*.
Q.E.D.
Classic. Also the fact that the EPA was the bad guy. Amazing
Perhaps Harvard will stand up to the mob- the top rated comment gives one hope, but I still expect Harvard ends up caving.
They let girls in and that was that.
About the top-rated comment: "Inmates running the asylum." Why are NYT commenters and comment-raters so racist? Didnt we learn from an NFL (or NBA) exec that YOu Cant Say That when minorities might be involved?
"Inmates" is coded dog-whistle for black people doncha know? And maybe Hispanics. In this context, it clearly refers to the POC students calling for the POC professor to get tenure, so referring to them as inmates is extra double rayiss.
And "asylum"? Please people. That conjures up prejudice against POMHC's (people of mental health challenges).
So not only did a racist commenter say the double bad anti-black/Hispanic and anti-mental case thing, and the racist NYT print the double bad thing, but thousands of racist readers of the NYT made it the top rated comment. Sad!
Her resume is one massive, dumb cliche. She is qualified to be a barista at Starbucks
"This is just another example of letting the inmates run the asylum."
Not to worry - the heavyweight Alumni donors at the Ivies are calling the signals. After 1450 SAT scores, friends and relatives get first placement dibs and jocks snatch up a grand chunk of the the remainder.
Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog reports that tiny Amherst College, which his son attended on a baseball scholly, "so many admissions spots [go to] athletes that pretty much everyone on campus is one. The kids actually have a term "NARP" -- non-athletic regular person -- for the few unicorns [future founders of $billion companies?] not actually on a varsity team."
Lance said...
Where university students pay their own tuition (either out of pocket or via student loan), they should have a say in what programs/courses are offered. Presumably they're adults, and if they they value gender/ethnic studies enough to spend their savings/future income + interest, then so be it.
*****************
Not when the rest of us have to subsidize the schools' budgets (state schools), or allow the private schools' special tax advantages, or where schools like Harvard can come into your town to buy large parcels of land, build huge dorms and and never pay property taxes on it, etc.
And the definition of "student" includes the idea that such a person is there to learn, not to decide what is important to be taught. Does Greta really understand anything about the climate? I'd wager that she couldn't name the five major gases in the Earth's atmosphere in the order of their concentration.
(and I'd bet that many warmistas who worship her can't either)
In actual asylums, the inmates get a say through the accommodations they can make with the staff, normal human interactions.
Staff recommends increasing dosage to a doctor, doctor turns and asks patient if he wants an increased dose, and the patient gets a say. The say is probably more important than the dose.
TJM burns Farmer at 500! Not really.
I really don't know what Farmer says that triggers so many attacks. It must be something about his . . . delivery. Nobody gives any arguments for why we aren't doomed, just little locker-room quiplets.
h at 423: if not t-i-c, you're decades behind. That's been the case in practice for a while now, with euphemisms, codewords and opaque processes.
Narr
Language and processes that only not-idle-enough educrats can devise.
Narr,
Would you please offer an English language version of the points you are trying to make? Thank you!
The key to college is to strive to get good grades and high SATs, but then don't go to Ivy league schools, or any wimpy, expensive private school back east.
Go to an SEC school. Incredible football, great looking gals and, even the academics are getting better.
Example: University of Georgia - Average GPA, 3.86; Average SAT 1240 - 1410
Diversity and... is exclusive. So, when are color judgments (e.g. racism, sexism, genderism, classism) relevant, legitimate, in context? Progress is an monotonic unqualified process. One step forward, two steps backward.
TJM said...
Her resume is one massive, dumb cliche. She is qualified to be a barista at Starbucks
Or a member of Congress...sigh...
JML,
Good one!
Howard,
U nuts. Is that clear English?
America. Is. Doomed.
Not quite yet. People are learning to discern between normalization, tolerance, and rejection; unwinding the balls of yarns; playing the semantic games and filtering the euphemisms. The rackets are a source of mirth, not to be taken seriously. Scientists are leaving the consensus, and looking for facts, not truths. People are standing in the face of coercion (e.g. so-called "cancel culture") to kneel.
>Eurocentric production of knowlege
Teaches at Harvard.
Can't spell "knowledge".
Perfect.
Bay Area Guy said...
"The key to college is to strive to get good grades and high SATs, but then don't go to Ivy league schools, or any wimpy, expensive private school back east.
Go to an SEC school. Incredible football, great looking gals and, even the academics are getting better.
Example: University of Georgia - Average GPA, 3.86; Average SAT 1240 - 1410"
Clemson is another example. Avg SAT for admitted students is 1310. Pretty good football team too.
It's not just Harvard. Diversity, including color judgments, color quotas, affirmative discrimination, exclusion, and other bigotry, is in progress to be normalized.
Hey I want diversity in the NBA and NFL. I want teams that look like America!
These students have a point: if Harvard discriminates such they admit 'diversity' students, i.e.; those of minority races and cultural backgrounds, because they honestly believe doing so adds value of some sort and magnitude to the education they provide, then by not incorporating the, so far, life lessons of these diversity students they are affirming that the discrimination they are practicing is cynical and disingenuous.
Average GPA, 3.86; What would you call the stoners? Cum laude.
If I was a Harvard student I would demand that the nude weather girl from Finland be a tenured full professor of climate science.
J Farmer,
Then why bring up ancient history?
In a sane world students, who are uneducated, would defer to the faculty regarding what they should learn. In the world we actually live in, professors are themselves increasingly the products of politicized environments, and perhaps rightfully don’t earn the respect of the students. So students, perhaps justifiably, figure they can have as much say about the curriculum as the professors. Once you throw out standards anything goes. It would be tempting to say that there are still standards in STEM fields, but “climate change” has ruined even that.
@TJM:
J Farmer,
Then why bring up ancient history?
Merely responding to another commenter who referred to me as "grouchy old queen." Among homosexual taxonomy, "queen" would never describe me, my personality, or my behavior.
And I have it on good authority that the current freshman class at Harvard is 14% black. That in a country where blacks make up about 11% of the population.
The professors aren't professing anything.
Ignoring some commenters' unhealthy interest in my sex life (which I happily do not reciprocate), now's a good time to again recommend Charles Murray's great 2008 book Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing American Schools Back to Reality. And also this piece published in Cato Unbound, in which Murray argues for doing away with the B.A.
Heres some more of her work
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=SIBn6YEAAAAJ&hl=en
Action series episode. Dialogue
"She's not just a pretty face. She's Harvard educated."
I have to admit it is pretty hilarious seeing the current hate-whitey iteration of the DNC being led by two pre-boomer old white men.
Harvard devalues their history
People attend a university in order to have the university value their histories. Check.
and experiences
People attend a university in order to have the university value their experiences. Check.
and fails to retain professors who support them.
People attend a university in order to be supported by professors. Check.
Stop the personal attacks. I am deleting the attacks and therefore also the responses.
Action series episode. Dialogue
"She's not just a pretty face. She's Harvard educated."
Further on:
"Fuck. Shit."
status update
Related -
Life science jobs at Berkeley give precedence to candidates’ diversity and inclusion statements (also a math department)
...
"This practice of making candidates not only swear fealty to diversity, but also show a history of concerted efforts to increase it, has been controversial, deemed as a form of ideological/political conformity that don’t belong in a hiring process."
Ann,
Since you are in the censoring mood, why not delete this?
J. Farmer said...
I have to admit it is pretty hilarious seeing the current hate-whitey iteration of the DNC being led by two pre-boomer old white men.
Nice knowing you
Ann,
You forgot to eliminate this:
J. Farmer said...
@Roughcoat:
I suppose that's a euphemism for becoming a grouchy old queen who spends his days posting multiple dyspeptic remarks on Althouse comment threads.
Grouchy? Most certainly. Old? Eh, 37 isn't really "old." Queen? Hate to disappoint you, but I'm not and have never been one. Though I concede I do enjoy sodomizing beautiful men.
As for dyspeptic, yes, I am guilty as charged. Anyone who has been paying attention for the past 25 years or so and isn't dyspeptic, there probably isn't much I can do for them.
“I was majoring in Afro-American Studies. I could have been black by now”. Woody Allen’s character Miles, from Sleeper in 1973
What this small group of students is demanding is not that Harvard begin offering courses and majors in identity "Studies" of various types. They already do. What they're demanding is a specific major/concentration/program of multidisciplinary coursework titled "Ethnic Studies" which would cover all the colors of the rainbow.
The perfect leader of this program would, of course, be the Latina professor whose non-tenure they are also protesting. She is a heavyweight in her field with a particular interest in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
A suspicious person would draw a nefarious connection between the two demands.
If you have a single "latinx" person, and you are speaking Spanish,is it "un latinx" or "una latinx"
Since I gather that the point of the word "latinx" is to be gender neutral, my question would apply whether the person appears male, female, indeterminate or Loco. (loca? Locx?)
John Henry
Barry Sanders,
Agree about Clemson. Especially because they use my textbook "packaging machinery Handbook"
As do UW, MSU, San Jose State, Rutgers and other fine schools.
John Henry
She is a heavyweight in her field with a particular interest in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Are Haitians "Latinos"?
If so, does that make Brazilians Latinos as well?
One federal govt definition (there are about 8-10 depending on agency) says Brazilians are "hispanic" since Brazil was colonized by Portugal and both Spain and Portugal occupy the Iberian peninsula.
I don't think 4 years is enough to teach all this contradictory bullshit. Harvard needs an 8 year BS degree to cover all the ramifications.
John Henry
"Life science jobs at Berkeley give precedence to candidates’ diversity and inclusion statements (also a math department)"
Oh, yeah. If you apply for an academic position nowadays, you don't just have to sign a loyalty oath. You need to write your own, and it had better be good. If you don't pledge allegiance to all the Leftist clap-trap, you won't even be considered.
Scholarship is determined by Leftists at other universities.
It is Leftists who get to determine what is useful for tenure.
Students are not provably Leftist enough to determine tenure.
QED
It's all bullshit.
"A black kid could get a sweet job at a major corporation with a Harvard degree in black studies. In HR, that is. Good enough."
But HR is the gateway for all further hires. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Looks like my comment responding to TJM@500pm (questioning, not Farmer's preferences but his attractiveness-- ooohhh like I said, burn) has been deleted (not by me) as well as TJM's original stupid comment.
Now TJM@526 wants me to explain what's clear enough. But since I am an educator, here:
"Burn" referred to the now-deleted comment by someone posting as TJM
"Trigger" referred to many of Farmer's critics' quick resort to personal attacks, and
speculation as to cause.
"t-i-c" (tongue in cheek) referred to the "h" and his proposal at the time cited.
To save time, I often leave off am/pm, or abbreviate names etc. when shorthanding others' remarks.
I'm sure Farmer and the Prof (the only others with any particular stake in the matter) know who posted what, when, and who deleted, likewise.
Narr
Uh-oh, the poor sod's now challenging the Prof's deletions
Narr,
If you understood English you would know the word “sod” does not apply to me but someone else. You are good for a laugh
gadfly said:
Warren Meyer at Coyote Blog reports that tiny Amherst College, which his son attended on a baseball scholly
Amherst doesn’t have athletic scholarships. All financial aid there is need-based and admission is need-blind.
Never heard that “non-athlete regular person” term when I was there in the mid 90s. It’s either new since then or something Meyer made up.
Let’s fuck Harvard up. Give all non-STEM to uMass-Boston, STEM to MiT. Liquify as much of the endowment as possible and give it to UMass system, 10% to HBCUs so they can tenure what’s-her-name. The Law School is certainly not necessary, but maybe UMass can salvage something from GSE, K-School, whatever; it’s up to them. The only thing that should be called Harvard is the medical school which is in Boston anyway—as much of the Cambridge campus as possible should be used to house homeless and refugees. Harvard doesn’t like borders and so shouldn’t have any.
Columbia would be even easier.
Also NOTHING should be renamed before Columbia and Yale are. NOTHING.
Dulwich College is alma mater of Wodehouse. And Farage, actually.
"Race" as in those of Chines ancestry?
Have you no opinion Althouse?
"This is just another example of letting the inmates run the asylum."
Everyone focuses on letting the inmates run it. The key assumption is that it is already an asylum of sorts.
No that was from a site named latin rebels,
They probably have a 30:1 liberal:conservative ratio in the faculty. "Diversity" is laughable.
@TJM:
Okay, sure, I'm a faggot. I'll happily concede. Who gives a fuck? Now please tell me how what I said was wrong or logically incoherent.
@Narr:
You hit the nail on the head. People can't actually refute the points I make, so they think calling me gay means something. Poor TJM. He actually thinks that insulting somebody actually makes him right. How sad. And of course, I'll point out that I use my real name and real photograph while "tough guys" like TJM hide behind avatars and pseudonyms. Draw your own conclusions.
Poor TJM indeed. Has no idea "poor sod" is an old Englishism, long since devoid of sexual content.
Narr
I like to laugh, and make others laugh too, especially by making fun of morons
"Harvard devalues their history and experiences and fails to retain professors who support them."
Racial preferences devalue and degrade everything they touch. Because (of course) it's hardly fair to admit academically weak students (to meet racial quota-goals, or for other reasons) only to flunk them out. Thus leaving them with the stain of failure and, often, a pile of debt.
And therefore academic standards, and standards of scholarship in general, must be compromised.
And that's before one even considers the negative effect of preferences on those who would have qualified for the preferences but did not need them, as they were strong enough academically to do without them. And whose achievements inevitably are tainted by the perception/uncertainty over whether they did need and use the preferences available to them.
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