Writes Jonathan Turley, in "Wisconsin-Madison Under Fire Over Mandatory Anti-Racism Training."
I've written about this controversy a couple times already — here and here — but I'm blogging it again for 2 reasons:
1. Unlike me, Turley takes the position that the assigned reading — this handout — could not have formed the basis of an open discussion. "The suggestion that this is a sounding board for discussion is refuted by even a cursory review of the material," he says. The reading may be rigid and doctrinaire, but — like the court opinions students read for standard law school classes — we may nevertheless pick it apart, question it, and analyze it. It could happen. I don't think that's likely, but I'd love to hear from anyone who attended the session. Is there a recording? Ironically, Turley has a closed mind about whether other people are open-minded. I'm open-minded, want more information, and would love to pick the whole event apart. I'm even up for a discussion of whether my attitude is a sign of white privilege.
2. Turley brings up the University's recent struggle with the legislature, which makes you wonder why the law school wasn't more sensitive in the way it taught anti-racism. He links to this Inside Higher Ed article:
The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted 11 to 6 [on December 13, 2023] to approve a deal to cut spending on diversity, equity and inclusion in exchange for $800 million in funds held hostage by state Republicans, reversing a first vote held last Saturday that rejected the deal 9 to 8.
The green-lighted proposal will cap all DEI staff hires for three years, restructure and redefine the roles of one-third of the system’s current DEI staff, and freeze all administrative hires across the system, among other concessions. In exchange the UW system will receive $800 million in state funding, including long-frozen pay increases for employees and money for a new engineering building at UW Madison, that was voted down last month....
Three regents... changed their votes from no to yes; they cited pleas from system leaders who said the universities desperately needed the withheld funding....
The vote is a victory for [Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin] Vos and his fellow Wisconsin Republicans, whose six-month standoff over DEI has finally produced results....
“I'm glad they approved the compromise tonight despite reported last-minute lobbying by Gov Evers to scuttle the deal,” Vos tweeted. “Republicans know this is just the first step in what will be our continuing efforts to eliminate these cancerous DEI practices on UW campuses.”
If they're threatening "continuing efforts," and they're asserting that the DEI practices are "cancerous," you would think the school would take care to produce high quality, genuinely educational training sessions that would impress the public at large and win support in the larger political debate. Perhaps the cocoon is so isolating that the handout seemed truly wholesome and not cancerous at all. As I said in my first blog post about it, "I thought the handout was generally well done." But you have to think about how it looks to other people. And yet, if your view really is that those other people are racist, then you won't want to appease them.
Posts
74 comments:
"you would think the school would take care"
Althouse, the very nature of DEI insists that this phrase in your post is nonsense. DEI is indoctrination to authoritarian rule that is inherently anti-rights for individuals. They have neither the inclination, nor the ability, nor the need to take care about the manner inwhich their boots press on the necks of their victims.
Bring back the rock.
"2. Turley brings up the University's recent struggle with the legislature, which makes you wonder why the law school wasn't more sensitive in the way it taught anti-racism. "
Two possibilities come to mind:
1) this was already in the works and they didn't think they could change course gracefully, or
2) they don't care. ("And yet, if your view really is that those other people are racist, then you won't want to appease them.")
I read the handout. It made me want to throw up. Sorry I can't be more articulate.
The fact that this DEI flummery was required means there’s no open discussion.
Look at the background of the person who led this Struggle Session.
Materials by Debra Leigh and Struggle Session conducted by Joey Oteng.
Neither is a Badger Law Professor. The Dean isn’t stupid. He doesn’t want his faculty to have to answer for this.
There is almost zero white on minority 'racism' in this country.
The only racism is anti-white sentiment in hiring and advancement, and it is blatant and out in the open.
There are thousands of examples.
How about we eliminate that bullshit while we're at it?
Be wary of anyone who exercises liberal license to indulge diversity (i.e. color judgments, class bigotry): racism, sexism, political congruence, and other class-disordered ideologies under the Pro-Choice ethical religion of progressive sects. Diversity, Equivocation, Indoctrination (DEI) sustains the legacy of selective exclusion (e.g. affirmative discrimination, political congruence).
Diversity of individuals, minority of one.
Ann wrote, "Turley brings up the University's recent struggle with the legislature, which makes you wonder why the law school wasn't more sensitive in the way it taught anti-racism."
The Harvard/Yale alum UW Law Dean doesn't care. He's going to push the Left's position onto the law students.
What is amazing to me is that the law school spends any time or money on this non-law foolishness. That's the main point. Students need to learn the law and that takes plenty of time and effort.
Creighton is a poor law school. It does now have a diversity ass't Dean. I don't know what else is going on there, but I can't imagine it wastes much more time and money on DEI. Creighton Law can't afford it.
Althouse is fortunate to have retired when she did, as are we who receive the benefits of this blogatorium. If our hostess was still there, however, or by some time-warp chance was a 1L again, and actually tried to engage in the kind of rigorous questioning that she theorizes COULD have been done, she'd be out on her keister quicker than that fox can skeddaddle from Meade's rake.
I know I said this yesterday, but you don't question in a struggle session! You submit and think of England.
Why doesn't the highly ranked University of Wisconsin law school require all students to learn how to play golf?
That's more important to the practice of law than DEI stuff.
"Weigh matters carefully, and think about those that matter most." Baltasar Gracian, S.J., 1647.
What matters most to the law students is to learn the law and how to think like a lawyer. That's it.
To quote the material: "You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are."
I'd ask Althouse, what has been your personal experience debating people who express those views at the very start? Even as one attorney or professor to another (much less as a student to a person in authority)? My own limited experience is that someone (in my case lefty fundraisers on my doorstep) expressing that kind of extreme (literally racist) view is not open to debate. The context here, of course, is that of students subjected to at least 4 years of DEI brainwashing in college, where social and even academic survival depended on your ability to conceal any doubts about diversity or the evilness of straight white males. Do you really feel that the UW Law School is a safe place to express those views, or is this just another ambush? "Do you feel lucky, punk? Well do ya?"
“If they're threatening "continuing efforts," and they're asserting that the DEI practices are "cancerous," you would think the school would take care to produce high quality, genuinely educational training sessions that would impress the public at large and win support in the larger political debate.”
The public is not going to be impressed because nobody reads that shit unless they have to. That’s why it’s mandatory. It’s not education, it’s reeducation.
I think the material probably was written to sound like it fostered open discussion. I too would like to hear what was actually taught, because the people that actually did my DEI training didn't seem like they were open minded about the subject. Still, the course was actually set up in a way that we could openly discuss amongst ourselves without the instructors. We just had to come back in a plenary session and say what the instructors seemed like they wanted to here. "oh yes, it was sad that the children more often not appeared to choose the dark skin doll as bad, which may suggest systemic racism." Still, in comments post course, the question was "couldn't the children have been asked if one of the dolls was good or bad? And if yes, then ask which was which?" I mean maybe both would have been bad or both good. Not everything is zero sum, unless you buy into the DEI stuff.
UW*-Seattle has its own "anti-racism" problem. The school of psychology has been caught discriminating on the basis of race, despite I-206's prohibition of race-based decisions. I-206 was passed by the voters a couple of decades ago prohibiting the use of quota or race in hiring decisions.
Progressives just can't help themselves from being racist bigots. They've pivoted from being White bigots to being Black bigots. It's in the genes. Progressives are decivilizers.
*University of Washington
Students know better than to try to push back on this shit, or even to try to turn the struggle session into a discussion. Even tenured faculty, as shown by Claudine Gay's efforts to punish free-thinkers at Harvard, are in danger if they give an unapproved opinion. One professor was punished for putting forth unapproved facts. What chance does a 1L have? Zero.
"I'm even up for a discussion of whether my attitude is a sign of white privilege."
Sometimes, it seems, Althouseland is a little like Barbieland, but with genitals.*
You don't seem to acknowledge the significant fact that the University did not produce the training session or the handout. It was a paid presentation not controlled directly by the law school, was it not? Had it been led or moderated by the school, then some debate in-session might have been possible, but it wasn't and the reference to the way these things are hashed out in class falls flat.
A quick look at the providers website should put to rest any hopes that it was a truly interactive event with open discussion for and against the mandated thinking.
*This would necessarily put Meade in the Ken role which I think should be considered flattering to a man of his age.
A very good assessment of how we got here and how the modern college student has been denied the right to reject the Western Ideal from a place of knowledge.
The Baby Boomer college student who militantly rejected classical Western ideals and principles during the 1960’s did at least have the opportunity to receive a classical education so that he could neutrally encounter what he eventually decided to reject. That same group has offered no such opportunity to their own children. The modern college student is not given the chance to authentically encounter the Western ideal. The version of the West to which he is first introduced is a caricature; it is a scathing editorial about the West written by parties who despise it. And so many of these young people are cut off from the best of what history and human accomplishment has to offer. In its place they are given hollow, cynical ideological speculations invented five minutes ago, which have never been used to build a single civilization, but which are working quite efficiently to tear one down. --Philosophical Conservatism
The only good DIE bureaucrat is a flogged DIE bureaucrat. These DIE bureaucrats believe their sh*t don't stink. They need to learn that racism or anti-racism as they like to call it is unacceptable, and the only solution to their propaganda is to be thrown out of society. A flogging, like the proverbial 2x4, is what's required to get their attention.
Bring back the rock.
The black rock was removed for defaming BlackRock and black holes... whores h/t NAACP in a diversity session.
It would be way more useful - and memorable - if Professor Emerita Ann Althouse gave a mandatory lecture on free speech and cruel neutrality.
It's a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought
That if you become a teacher
By your pupils you'll be taught
As a teacher I've been learning
And forgive me if I boast
That I've now become an expert
On the subject I like most
Getting to know you
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me
Getting to know you, putting it my way but nicely
You are precisely my cup of tea
Getting to know you
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you
Getting to know what to say
Haven't you noticed
Suddenly I'm bright and breezy
Because of all the beautiful and new things
I'm learning about you day by day
If the law school was honest they would not be concerned about the state of their students' souls but would rather concentrate on their actions. Sort of "I don't care if you think I am going to hell so long as you don't up and send me there."
So long as everyone behaves who cares? But since they do care what and how the students think, and believe they are fit to censor and censure wrongthink, their actions are fit to be condemned because they are anti-liberty. They are an arm of the state attempting to control thought and belief. Nothing more tyrannical than that.
Althouse wrote:
"Ironically, Turley has a closed mind about whether other people are open-minded. I'm open-minded, want more information, and would love to pick the whole event apart. I'm even up for a discussion of whether my attitude is a sign of white privilege."
********************
Is "obtusity" a word?
Because that's what our blogmistress is engaging in. Surely she should KNOW by now DEI's main takeway is that ALL whites are irredeemably racists, no matter how they act or think, that they live oblivious to an ocean of privilege all around them.
Miss Ann, you don't get to "pick apart" a DEI course. If you are white, it picks YOU apart. That's its entire and only point.
I ask: when was the last time anyone heard a DEI zealot concede ANYTHING? It doesn't happen.
"Close-minded" Professor Turley knows this.
It's astounding that you don't.
The handout defines racism in such a way as to exclude pretty much everyone except whites.
The idea that there could be an open and productive discussion under such terms is absurd.
This is the "Reality" Check:
Let’s first define racism with this formula:
Racism =racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power.
To say people of color can be racist, denies the power
imbalance inherent in racism. Certainly, people of color can
be and are prejudiced against white people. That was a part
of their societal conditioning. A person of color can act on
prejudices to insult or hurt a white person. But there is a
difference between being hurt and being oppressed. People
of color, as a social group, do not have the societal,
institutional power to oppress white people as a group.
An individual person of color abusing a white person
– while clearly wrong, (no person should be insulted, hurt,
etc.) is acting out a personal racial prejudice, not racism.
I have yet to hear of a DEI session that allows open exchanges and disagreement with its central premises in any truly honest and freewheeling sense -- premises such as that racism is systemic, that whites enjoy privilege by virtue of being white, etc. Moreover, I think an exclusive focus on the materials of a DEI training session overlooks the vast array of phony "harms" invented by DEI and used to enforce a new ethic of near total conformity. Here is a part of an essay by Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars that I think gets at the true heart (of darkness) of the DEI. From "After Claudine," https://www.nas.org/blogs/statement/after-claudine
"An enormous variety of “harms” lurk in the immutable facts of human existence as perceived through the lens of DEI, and the DEI-inflected university sets itself up ostensibly to shield students from these harms and from any open debate about whether they are indeed real. I say “ostensibly,” because what DEI really does is inculcate fragility in these students. They are taught a combination of resentment and vulnerability that makes them easily led by the DEI demagogues. Led where? Into public protests where their individuality is dissolved into the self-righteous anger of the mob...DEI wears a light veil of reasoned response to the supposed oppression by the traditional authority of the West. But behind that veil is the wild urge to destroy. The atrocities committed by the agents of Hamas on October 7 are the real face of DEI, which is why the DEI movement has defended Hamas and has struggled to hide its glee over the success of the festive spree of murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping."
Boxes have to be checked. If that means the Law School Dean has to throw good money at charlatans, so be it. Why should the Dean care? He's making bank.
DEI is reminiscent of the 80s feminist sessions that claimed to support women in situations involving sexism, rape, and superior exploitation, which was, ironically, accompanied by social liberalism, planned parenthood, political congruence ("="), rent-a-womb, social progress, etc. Diversity is the general doctrine inclusive of diverse class-disordered ideologies, where demos-cracy dies in darkness: denial of individual dignity, conscience, and value, but people... persons are waking from their woke complacency.
Professor,
I am sorry but robother is right. There is no debating these ridiculous statements. Look at the moderators/presenters. If people wanted these sessions to be open discussions, these grifters would not be there.
As for why they are still doing it, because they think that they will get away with it. When there is a complaint, they will fire the grifters and hire a new set of grifters.
"The reading may be rigid and doctrinaire, but — like the court opinions students read for standard law school classes — we may nevertheless pick it apart, question it, and analyze it."
Oh, yeah, right. With the academic equivalent of Joy Reid glaring at you from the front of the room with a laser pointer clutched in its paw, shrieking "Thass rayciss!". You might as well show up in blackface, with a bone in your nose.
"There is almost zero white on minority 'racism' in this country."
Oh, come off it. Like you live in South Chicago. Like there is enough money in North America to pay you to live in South Chicago.
I am confident that any law school student who makes it through the admissions process already knows what the "correct" attitudes are and will parrot them back appropriately. These types of materials probably do influence the weak minded; the rest are just made more cynical. I'm more concerned about the hiring of DIE administrators who influence actual decision making including what is acceptable discourse by law professors.
I think our hostess is more fortunate than she realizes to not still be teaching, tho it is undoubtedly a loss for the law school.
"What is amazing to me is that the law school spends any time or money on this non-law foolishness. That's the main point. Students need to learn the law and that takes plenty of time and effort."
Actually, there is a pedagogical purpose to this crap. They have admitted a bunch of people who are never going to "learn the law", as you so quaintly phrase it. But Shithole U has no intention of flunking those people. So the purpose of this "training" is to make it abundantly clear to the white students that any mention of the utter incompetence of their "peers" will be cause for a struggle session followed by expulsion at the least, and quite possibly criminal charges.
"I thought the handout was generally well done."
Really? You thought it was well done? You mean, like, the spelling or something?
"Each is followed by a statement that is a reality check and consequence for harboring such attitudes."
Are you "harboring attitudes", Althouse? There are consequences for harboring attitudes. I would hate to see you harboring any attitudes.
The handout is BS. Catch-22 at all levels. Just fess up you are a racist and off yourself.
"2. Turley brings up the University's recent struggle with the legislature, which makes you wonder why the law school wasn't more sensitive in the way it taught anti-racism. "
"A promise made is a debt unpaid, and the code of the trail is stern." The University made a deal to get the $800 MM. Sounds like they went ahead and poked the bear. I think UWM is a great school but I hope the legislature questions the U's attitude toward the deal. Perhaps they will take the money away for non-compliance.
It's informative that Evers wanted the school to give up a near $1MMM figure to just keep going on DEI. 1. Wisconsin is very rich. 2. DEI is very important to Democrats.
The company I was with did not recruit engineers from UMW. Hired a lot from Platteville though, good down to earth folks there.
The mystical powers given to a handout on one day of an entire law school curriculum to totally overwhelm functioning adults (ok law students? And render them brainwashed some Automatons is striking.
And in contrast to the post, when someone calls something you're doing. "cancerous" you can't mollify them by doing it more rigorously. You can't mollify them at all, so you might as well ignore them.
The best defense of the handout emphasizes its smallness. It was a one-off. But the attack upon it is premised upon its representativeness. Are there DEI mavens who can seriously assert that the handout is contrary to DEI principles? Please, speak up.
Insty chimes in: https://instapundit.com/628611/
He concludes with “It’s been said before, and it’s still true: Social Justice Warriors always lie, and they always double down.”
Althouse, what do you suppose would have happened to a student who stood up in that "debate" and said, "This training course is nothing but horseshit on a platter, and I categorically refuse to participate any further because to continue to do so would give this training course and the people running it more intellectual respect than it and they deserve- and they deserve no respect at all," and then walked out. You taught at the school, what do you think would happen to a student who did that.
Unlike me, Turley takes the position that the assigned reading — this handout — could not have formed the basis of an open discussion.
He's right. You're wrong. End of discussion.
It could happen. I don't think that's likely
Lawyerly weasel-wording. Some of us know what a struggle session looks like, and I suspect you know it too. Are you being deliberately gullible for fear of losing your emerita status?
I'm even up for a discussion of whether my attitude is a sign of white privilege.
No you aren't.
Bottom line, the University of Wisconsin agreed to certain conditions in order to receive much-needed funding. They have apparently lied. The legislature needs to demonstrate that it meant what it said by clawing back the money, including anything the University has already spent.
DEI is hate speech. The racists, sexists, abortionists, trans/homophobes, et al should be required to affirmatively refute their transhumane religious ideologies.
That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. #HateLovesAbortion
Professor, you need to have Meade read this handout. It is not well-written.
but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are."
Lots of commenters here with more education than I.
Exactly how do I debate, challenge, document, this statement is a full on twaddle?
Debate is impossible when zero facts support the material being presented.
We have moved on from, racists are acting bad, here are the actions. To all Whites are Racist/Oppressor.
That includes our host. She is the oppressor. She has oppressed every black student that ever sat in her class room. She continues her racist actions even in retirement.
At issue today, is the Professor emeritus has no position to challenge or debate this conclusion. Her parents and grand parents are the proof.
It's interesting how many of you display the lack of an open mind on the subject of whether an open mind is possible. You think there can be no debate about the question whether there could be any debate.
I'm saying that debate was always possible. I know if I were tasked with teaching a law school class where that handout was the required reading, there would be critical thinking and debate and discussion, even if I had to verbalize the points that the students felt too intimidated to make.
When I assigned narrow, closed-minded judicial opinions in my 30+ years of law school teaching, I encouraged critique and debate. It's second nature to me. There are always paths and openings, and if you are not developing the capacity of the students to see the openings and articulate the arguments, it's just not law school.
So I believe in that. I didn't say it was likely that the people who presented the session stressed critical thinking and debate. But I was not there and I have not heard from people who were. As I said, I'd love to receive a recording. I am displaying my own open-mindedness and readiness to debate when I say I will not say what happened at the session when all I have is the handout.
"He's right. You're wrong. End of discussion."
Don't you see why it's funny to put it like that?
Notice, I'm still talking to you and trying to open things up even as you display an utterly closed mind and tell me to shut up about it.
The problem isn't training about racism per se or structural biases, rather, the issue is bowing down to quasi-religious DEI dogmas that are often inaccurate or incomplete but that cannot be challenged. Current "anti-racist" viewpoints may derive from, and bleed into, the popular fiction notion of the "Magical Negro." For example, see Whoopi Goldberg as the ancient and powerful mystical bartender Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro
We should change DEI training to include the following for meaningful debate and perspective:
1. The pre-scientific history of racism and tribalism as expressed by the "lived experiences" of people now in isolated European, Asian, and African cultures. Listen to their often routine expressions of superiority and xenophobia...start with the experiences of non-Japanese people in Japan...non-White people in rural Ireland or Scotland...white people in rural Africa... (We are all silly apes. All of us.)
2. Have a practitioner of 20th century IQ research (i.e., military draftee pre-employment job placement testing) recount their goals and the copious evidence. This person will likely be employed by the US Department of Defense, and must not call Charles Murray of "The Bell Curve" bad names.
3. Recount the cultural characteristics and methods of that led some to have technological and military dominance over their neighbors (i.e., the creators of empires). Per written history, this must be presented by proud, nationalistic people from China, Japan, Mongolia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Dahomey/Benin, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark/Norway/Sweden (Vikings), the UK, or the USA.
4. Recount the cultural characteristics and methods of those groups that have never dominated anyone, and that have no written record of inventing any unique technology.
5. Compare and contrast to determine why some 'win' and why some do not. Distinguish between magical thinking, unbounded compassion, and the operational factors that have resulted in success. Consider the structural requirements for success. (Hint: It'll duplicate how all the empire builders operated, and be unrelated to race.)
I don't see how staying up on this session and saying "This is all BS" is representative of the open-moments and free discussion that our host was wondering about.
If a student were to speak up in the session saying something like, "Where is the evidence for the proposition that I, as a white person who grew up in a working-class neighborhood in a family that has never had a college graduate before me or owned a home, have received privilege that my friend Bob here, as a black person who's in the second generation of college graduates and whose parents own their home in an agent suburb, hasn't received?" what would have been the result?
I do think it's likely that any student who tried something like that would have been shut down (best case, the moderator or whoever was leading the session would have dismissed the personal qexamples as irrelevant to a Larger Truth), and I think it could only have been done by a student who had a serious backup plan for life. But denouncement is not the same thing as argument.
Althouse said: "Notice, I'm still talking to you and trying to open things up even as you display an utterly closed mind and tell me to shut up about it." Face it, some things are just not open to debate, notwithstanding your "open mind" about the BS clearly reflected in the handout. Your rationale sounds, to me, like a "make weight" argument, although I always assume it is one that is sincerely held, given your academic background.
"Like there is enough money in North America to pay you to live in South Chicago."
If I moved to South Chicago I would be robbed and beaten the day I moved in. Because of my skin color.
You're naive if you think you could debate diversity material.
The hard reality of DEI is that those who question or criticize it have no idea what the ramifications of speaking up will be. A complaint from a woman of color that leads to a disciplinary hearing? A cloud of complaints to the DEI rapid response team that effectively ends your academic career as student or professor at that institution? The better move is to shut up. It is the Havel's Greengrocer's fable in action--the individual vs. the state system. Workers of the World! Unite!
Althouse, you would be brought up on charges in today's environment, and charge number one would be that, while professing open-mindedness, you facilitated openly racist thoughts that have no place in a UW classroom.
Althouse, don't you have the ability to visit classrooms and see how subject matter is being taught? Perhaps you can open your mind enough to actually experience what occurs in reality.
An open mind is a mindset where one accepts the possibility of being wrong. It's not about who has the greatest imagination and can dream up scenarios of why someone else is wrong.
Perhaps some effort on your part would inform you as to what the reality on the ground is. Interview some students, attend a session. Based on mandatory 'training' I've had to endure on this and related subject matter, I don't believe that these are two-way intellectual discussions where the teachers learn along with the students. Heck, the subject matter isn't even presented by UW instructors if I understand it correctly.
Truly open minds will actually seek out knowledge that may prove their own fallibility.
But hey, I could be wrong.
Best regards,
Goetz von Berlichingen
There are always paths and openings, and if you are not developing the capacity of the students to see the openings and articulate the arguments, it's just not law school.
Is your mind open to the possibility that Wisconsin Law isn’t, anymore?
Debate is possible but in my opinion unlikely unless it is coming from a person elevated in DEI "status". Those being vilified (the proper term is stereotyped and discriminated against, ironically) will largely be silent. Especially give the power dynamic between first year law students and the department/consultant delivering the material. Everyone knows it isn't a discussion.
An association that I am on the board for just instituted a DI program. Multiple women chimed in that they didn't think it was necessary based on their experience in the association (the industry was described by a potential keynote speaker as "stale, pale, and male"...thankfully they didn't pick that person to speak). I said nothing because I didn't feel like my input would be valued...especially when the chair recognized his "white, male privilege" when introducing this program. BTW, that assertion led me to believe that the chair is only in the place he is (the CHAIR!) by virtue of his gender & the color of his skin...
Lastly, I love this blog, and I know there are a lot of lawyers here, I do not, however, feel the same way about lawyers. In my experience (i.e. my industry), lawyers do not seem to understand reality and I think it is because they are unconstrained by actual, physical laws and have never had to actually make anything. There, my engineering bias is showing...
"I know if I were tasked with teaching a law school class where that handout was the required reading, there would be critical thinking and debate and discussion, even if I had to verbalize the points that the students felt too intimidated to make."
But you weren't tasked with such a thing- you retired from the school years ago. How many of the professors there right now would feel free to do what you claim you would have done? Have any of them actually gone public with any criticism of the required training? Have any of the students done so? In the age smart-phones, isn't it surprising to you that no one released a recording of a session, even if just audio?
Notice, I'm still talking to you and trying to open things up even as you display an utterly closed mind and tell me to shut up about it.
@Alhouse, a few years back you called me a racist for no reason other than the fact that I am a Republican. Where was your “open” mind then? You’ve never apologized and I expect you never will. There’s a certain kind of professor that hates to admit mistakes and probably you’ve spent most of your adult life being that kind of professor.
I read the handout before I commented. It is not open mindedness that caused you to write what you wrote; it is pure acceptance of evil. I do not care whether you accept evil out of fear or out of gullibility or out of a desire to join it.
I am also closed minded about two plus two equaling four and the first derivative of x squared being 2x. I am even closed minded about things like gravity and liquid water being wet.
Framing the anti-DEI movement as a purely right wing obsession is inaccurate at best/misleading at worst. A sizable slice of moderate America, including many “traditional lefties” are appalled by the new Progressive orthodoxy and all of its illogical (and many times illiberal) arguments. That right wing hucksters are involved in bringing down DEI programs is hardly newsworthy at this point. The more interesting article would have been an open examination of the Left’s own views of DEI. This would also require dissociating the individual terms — diversity, equity, and inclusion — from the goals and methods of “DEI programs” as they operate within organizations.
"@Alhouse, a few years back you called me a racist for no reason other than the fact that I am a Republican."
You didn't spell my name right and I suspect you are not correctly reporting whatever that incident was. Link and quote or it didn't happen.
It's interesting how many of you display the lack of an open mind
Ann's trolling her readers again, folks. Move along.
"I thought the handout was generally well done."
I still can't believe you wrote that.
"Perhaps, as you become more trustworthy as allies, you will build genuine relationships with a few people of color who offer their reflections when you get stuck."
In other words, "SUCK THIS BLACK DICK NOW!!!!".
Dave Begley said...
"It would be way more useful - and memorable - if Professor Emerita Ann Althouse gave a mandatory lecture on free speech and cruel neutrality."
I would drive a couple of hours to attend that lecture.
Althouse @ 6:55
Are you saying take the handout and deconstruct it as an exercise in critical thinking and debate?
That would be useful. You could, idealy, devine intentions and motives that way.
Turley is not close-minded and the professor is being obtuse.
Is it theoretically possible that a DEI brainwashing session at a left-wing school run by left-wing zealots ensured there was open debate about the premises and conclusion underlying its core beliefs and materials? Sure, anything is possible. Is it likely? Of course, not! DEI folks do not have a history of being open-minded or tolerant of dissenting views. The materials themselves point to that being the case again. "You're racist no matter what and don't even know it" isn't an idea that can be rebutted with facts. Remember, using logic is racist to the DEI crowd. Wake up.
Althouse, it's time to "come to Jesus".
Go ahead, pick apart that DEI handout and publish your comments here.
Dare you!
You can start with this notion they are always trying to hand us about being "allies". Why would we want to be their allies, when they are clearly our enemies?
Professor,
Most of your commenters are open to debate with people who operate in good faith. The purveyors of this DEI nonsense do not and we have seen this over and over. You know “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ….”
Turley is correct because he read the materials and looked at the presenter who has some really “interesting” views and has shown that she is not open to debate or rational thought. It is not close-minded to say “enough, I am not wasting my time with you who does not operate in good faith” to someone like this. It is foolish to pretend otherwise after all this time.
This training is part of the ABA Standard 303’s requirement for all law schools and was presented by consultant Debra Leigh, Vice President for Cultural fluency, equity, & inclusion at St. Cloud Technical & Community College.
Let's stop right there. UW Law gets its "diversity training" from a "community college teacher"?
What's the matter, they couldn't find a 3rd grade teacher with purple hair and a nose ring to do it?
As I said in my first blog post about it, "I thought the handout was generally well done."
Really? Let's consider their first point
I’m Colorblind.
“People are just people; I don’t see color; we’re all just human.” Or “I don’t think of you as Chinese.” Or “We all bleed red when we’re cut.” Or “Character, not color, is what counts with me.”
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
Statements like these assume that people of color are just like you, white; that they have the same dreams, standards, problems, and peeves that you do. “Colorblindness” negates the cultural values, norms, expectations and life experiences of people of color.
Why yes, I assume that they are "people", just like me, and that the "of color" is secondary to the "people" part.
And you DEI proponents assume the exact same thing:
Because you can NOT argue that "any difference in outcomes shows racism" unless you START with the assumption that we're all teh same, whether we're black, white, asian, Indian, hispanic, or whatever.
Racism is the belief that if I look at you and see that your skin color is different than mine, I can immediately jump to "therefore you're different and not like me at all."
Which is exactly what this DEI dreck embraces.
So if that's "generally well done", you've got some serious problems
The reading may be rigid and doctrinaire, but — like the court opinions students read for standard law school classes — we may nevertheless pick it apart, question it, and analyze it. It could happen.
Sure, and Unicorns could poop Skittles on you on your walk tomorrow.
but in the real world, it couldn't, wouldn't, and didn't happen.
It's not "open-minded" to think that the vicious racist totalitarians who produced that document could have then turned around and ran open, honest, and "respectful of MAGAt racists" "discussion", it's "vacuum headed" to pretend it might have happened
“I know if I were tasked with teaching a law school class where that handout was the required reading, there would be critical thinking and debate and discussion, even if I had to verbalize the points that the students felt too intimidated to make.”
If you’re counting on tenure to save you, better think again. Those days are gone. Mandatory “training” is not compatible with debate or discussion.
You didn't spell my name right
I apologize for that. I was using my iPhone (very small letters for very old eyes) and I'm a crappy proofreader at the best of times.
and I suspect you are not correctly reporting whatever that incident was. Link and quote or it didn't happen.
Oh, it happened all right. But if you think you can con me into searching through years of your posts looking for your thoughtless remark then forget about it. I have more interesting things to do, like counting snowflakes as they fall. You should be able to pinpoint it yourself -- for one thing, it marked a change from my comments where I regarded you as well-meaning, albeit generally mistaken, to at best thoughtless and at worst arrogant and elitist. After that I've never missed a chance to skewer you, as you deserve. You can't even be bothered to issue an non-apologetic apology? Skewering is the least of what you should receive.
Althouse: I believe you would approach this differently.
But this puts you in a miniscule group of faculty, and I do not believe you could do it today without dire negative consequences, and if you didn't have tenure, you would be fired or let go the next semester and never find work teaching again. I know more than one adjunct to whom this has happened.
There's no such thing as academic freedom. There's no such thing as a freedom reserved for a tiny minority of a tiny minority of workers -- tenured professors. It's a privilege, not a freedom. But I do believe you would try to practice it in your own classes.
But was that enough? You had other roles at the university. You watched it become a cesspool of viewpoint repression. Did you do anything in your professional capacity to fight that?
You would think the school would take care to produce high quality, genuinely educational training sessions that would impress the public at large and win support in the larger political debate.
As others have noted, that is not what proponents of DEI want. They are on a mission. And they cannot let anything or anyone get in the way of spreading their religion/philosophy/ideology.
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