"Critics view them as a form of compelled political speech that are often used to evade legal restrictions on affirmative action.... [A] survey conducted for the committee found that more than half of Michigan faculty members believed diversity statements placed pressure on professors to express specific moral, political and social views.... Thomas Braun, a biostatistics professor who led the committee, said he hoped the university would still find a way to allow job applicants to discuss how their work related to diversity in the broad sense, without imposing ideological litmus tests. 'I think all faculty should be able to explain how their own personal experiences inform what they do everyday as a faculty member, and how it fits in the core values and mission of UM,' Mr. Braun said in an email. 'If that seems impossible to some individuals, then maybe UM is not the right fit.'..."
The NYT reports.
That word "fit" is doing a lot of work. Anyway, at least now faculty and prospective faculty won't have to formally explain how they fit the University's specific moral, political and social views, but they will still need to fit and to be able to explain how they fit.
Isn't the formal statement the easier part of this fitness test? Especially with A.I.
পোস্টগুলি
৪৪টি মন্তব্য:
Per the dystopian spoken word track Fitter Happier on Radiohead's OK Computer (1997) album:
Fitter, happier
More productive
Comfortable
Not drinking too much
Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week
Getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
At ease
...
Tied to a stick
That's driven into
Frozen winter shit, the ability to laugh at weakness
Calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig in a cage on antibiotics
https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/558/
Wow. The EDU Insanity is moderating.
It's not diversity of individuals, minority of one, but rather Diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry) including racism, sexism, ageism, etc. that evolved in plain sight under the principle of political congruence and ethics of Pro-Choice religion in progressive sects.
McCarthyism starts to recede.
So now what we do in our personal lives matters when seeking a professional job? Can we take this litmus test back to the 90's and see where it would have us today?
Notice how they don't say they're going to return the BUDGET for these items back to the taxpayers.
DEI was a way to MASSIVELY increase the Democrat Party's government jobs program ... and the ONLY reason they are abandoning it is because:
a) Courts were about to take the money from them in the form of payouts to victims of their blatant racism and
b) Taxpayers aren't demanding the budgets back. And aren't shooting anyone yet.
So, mission accomplished! Thumbs up George Soros and Barack Obama. Your theft of the Treasury of the United States continues unabated.
McCarthyism was the totem actually practiced by Democratic politicians. The real threat of American Civil Liberties Unburdened occurred under Hoover with Palmerism, later under FDR, and today under an umbrella of diverse public and private agencies and corporations.
When Harvard's President Gay was revealed to be a massive DEI hire who plagarized every last shred of her academic career to get a million-dollar payday as Harvard President ... they fired her.
They "fired" her.
She's now a tenured professor (protected from firing) at ... wait for it ... Harvard. She makes $1 million a year ... just like when she was President.
Nothing is receding. The roaches are merely returning to their cracks in the wall with all of our fucking money.
So, how will UM now monitor whether departments continue to discriminate based on statements about "fit"?
We get the money back tho, right?
Right?
IRC, Michagan passed a law saying no discrimination based on race. Period. That meant white people too. So, this implies U of M was simply ignoring that, and no one sued them over it. Or maybe they used Grandma O"connor brilliant reasoning that discriminating against white people, especially white men, was OK because of...racism or something. And that we'd have to wait till 2030 before that could be changed.
Wink wink, nod nod.
The Democrats and their academia nut minions think that all they need to do is rebrand the shit sandwich they keep trying to force people to swallow. Like Althouse points out, the solution is actually more kafka-esque and the original problem.
It's like they want to hand the next presidency to JD Vance on a silver platter.
Is this the waking that Obozo is referring to,?
I'd feel a lot better about statements like this if I had some assurances that all those hundreds of DEI Wokester professionals that have been tucked into place over the past few yearsm have also been gotten rid of, i.e. are completely off the payroll and not sucking down the coffers in some other better-camouflaged sinecure. There some old phrase about great causes becoming rackets.....
The Republican Joe McCarthy is always trotted out as the evil face of state tyranny, but the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was more often run by Democrats, and with more zeal.
“Critics view them as a form of compelled political speech that are often used to evade legal restrictions on affirmative action.” Yes, and thank you for honestly framing the debate in this preamble. The critics quoted are absolutely correct in all aspects.
This suggests that there is some weariness with DEI inside the universities. Maybe inside corporations and other institutions as well? That's surprising, given how uniformly colleges have been on the left. Maybe there are some remaining yellow dog Democrats on the faculty who would never vote Republican but are very tired of wokeness. Possibly it even goes beyond them. Are even the administrators affected? That would be a surprise.
n.n. Is right: it’s not only wrong to use the term McCarthyism, but McCarthy was proven right in his own directed efforts to root out Communist operatives and dupes in government. Records from the Soviet Union confirmed infiltration at the highest levels.
Anyway, this statement makes clear that the University has no intention of ending this nefarious practice.in fact, it appears to be making it even more central to its mission. An investigation and a several-year review of hiring practices is apparently needed.
Why bother gaming the system? Aren’t you throwing academic principles out the window? If they’ll do this, what else will they do to you? Let them rot with subpar DEI hires and go someplace that judges you on merit.
No longer baked into the documents contained in applicant's file, will still rely upon interviews, the verbal statements and physical appearance of applicant, to confirm DEI favorability. Too male, too white, too preppy - negative feedback in committee votes.
Serious question for Ann Althouse: Given your views on Free Speech, would you have been hired by Wisconsin today?
Harvard's pick of Claudine Gay to be its president is symptomatic of how DEI institutional cherry-picking process works: visual assessment of candidate, based upon physical appearance, to certify DEI compliance. Gay is a knucklehead; if she were a white male, based on her academic credentials, she/he would be at a low-end community college. Paging Dr Jill, another knucklehead, but at least corralled to her local Delaware CC fully aware of her poor academic credentials.
UM is still requiring them to lie, however. Now they have to lie about their "fit"...a fit like the bed of Procrustes, I guess.
Now that you've been retired for a few years, aren't you revolted at the degree to which you had to fake your real beliefs and thoughts in academia? I suspect there are several of us here who also escaped. It takes a few years to actually feel safe about openly expressing our thoughts again. The cruel neutrality, no longer necessary, was a clever and very necessary cover.
Once the relief subsides, the utter revulsion comes. And then, the peace.
DEI is more about window-dressing that anything else. White liberals are comforted by the superficial appearance of minority representation in their elite institutions, while ignoring all of the compromises and special tricks the organization had to put in place to achieve such diversity. If they were serious about group parity, they would focus on achievement gaps starting at the grade school level.
UM is a business like any university. The core value is revenue. If they don’t want to be known as a girls college like UCLA and UNC they will make the necessary changes. Girls colleges will be the first and hardest hit over the next decade.
The most clearly dishonest (or ignorant) statement in the article: "In states like Michigan and California, which ban direct racial preferences in hiring, the statements have been credited with helping public universities hire more diverse faculties."
Quite the opposite - the statements have been used only for the specific purpose of avoiding any ideological diversity on the faculty. Successfully, one might add.
I was forced to try to meet this litmus test in the mid-90s and was immediately banned from teaching in my academic department. Ultimately I went back to construction and then found some political research and writing.
I worry more for kids today. Since the late 90s, even in conservative districts, they are subjected to punitive identity politics throughout their curriculum. And while Britain is further down the road of literally placing children in re-education gulags, since the late 1990’s the DOE and the states evaluate children using tools like the “Hate Hurts” curriculum to suppress dissent, teach passivity, and identify “problematic” views.
I would insist on seeing every single document created to track and evaluate your children. Of course, there’s the rub: doing so singles them out for scrutiny.
Such is totalitarianism.
The Hawkeye daughter, matriarch of a biracial family, was forced to write a diversity statement for her job as a mathematics professor. So that the white women on the search-and-exclusion committee could be sure they didn't get a freethinker or someone not up on the jargon.
It won't be required any more. You should only submit it if you're interested in being hired.
Burn the place to the ground and sow the tainted Earth with salt. Let not one, reeking stone stand upon another.
So, "more than half" the faculty believes diversity statements are compelled speech, but the professor they found to quote hopes UMich can find a way to keep them around anyway.
My husband's organization, at which he is not "out," recently changed from supporting DEI to supporting... what was it... EIB. Which means the same thing. (Not Rush's Excellence In Broadcasting Network, needless to say.)
Thomas Braun, a biostatistics professor..
anyone want to guess? what a biostatistics professor does?
Let's ASK!
What is Biostatistics?
Biostatisticians use statistical methods and techniques to improve the health of people and communities..
“What, for example, does the data say about the association between an environmental exposure and a health outcome?”..
But they are not mere number-crunchers. They play pivotal roles in designing studies to ensure the right kind of information are collected.
“It’s a field that merges passion and skill with biomedical science and mathematics and statistics"..
I guess they finally tired of every professor up for tenure or a job telling them they were born a poor black child in Mississippi........or raised middle-class.
You can put in speed bumps or take them down, but the only color that matters is green.
"I think all faculty should be able to explain how their own personal experiences inform what they do everyday as a faculty member"
Why, exactly?
I thought that racism, sexism...DEI was already relabeled as IED. Never say DIE. Boom!
What if a qualified applicant doesn’t give a flying fuck about Prof. Braun’s diversity goals?
The Struggle Sessions will be put on temporary hiatus until November 2028. And winning!
DEI has been relabeled NYT (Not Your Type) to assuage the bitter feelings of Critical Racist Theorists.
"Thomas Braun, a biostatistics professor who led the committee, said he hoped the university would still find a way to allow job applicants to discuss how their work related to diversity in the broad sense, without imposing ideological litmus tests."
In other words, they'll (regrettably) stop imposing literal 'ideological litmus tests' and instead, figure out some way to continue to discriminate that won't attract as much attention.
What's next, The Diversity Underground? Heil racism, sexism, and ageism, too. Throw another baby on the barbie, the "burdens" are Diverse.
The entire process is utterly broken and I have no idea how to fix it. The last time I was part of a search committee we just didn't bother to read the "diversity statements," but their existence--or the overall climate of which they are just a symptom--has created a situation in which 100% of the white applicants jabbered out diversity-speak word-salads even unprompted. In what has to be an effect unintended by the mendacious weasels who created this abomination of a system, the non-white candidates were the only ones who seemed to speak freely and to criticize the way things are.
The problem--as I've seen first hand for almost three decades--is that no one is stupid enough to say out loud that they are going to discriminate, but a couple of motivated conspirators can deep-six applicants with any given demographic characteristics with complete deniability. You can have 10 honest people who care about merit and only two who are political and they can still make certain that no applicants make it into the final pool who might even be suspected of thinking for themselves or who are the "wrong" gender, race, sexuality, etc.
Peace, when you did nothing to stop other people from being persecuted and purged all around you?
I wouldn’t sleep well.
The way to fix it would have been to oppose it then, loudly, and damn the cost.
A very successful and famous (within academic circles) professor/important magazine editor once sent me an anonymous letter urging me, a graduate student on the way to being purged, to expose the way a hiring committee he sat on was being operated.
It was hardly difficult to know it was him. To send the letter anonymously, and to a literally poor and powerless graduate student who would soon be shown the door, tells you everything you need to know about the morality of the silence of the tenured.
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