The Atlantic: The Hypocrisy Of Mandatory Diversity Statements In Big Education

[Blue Horseshoe 348]

 

 

 

The Hypocrisy of Mandatory Diversity Statements

.....John D. Haltigan sued the University of California at Santa Cruz in May. He wants to work there as a professor of psychology. But he alleges that its hiring practices violate the First Amendment by imposing an ideological litmus test on prospective hires: To be considered, an applicant must submit a statement detailing their contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion......According to the lawsuit, Haltigan believes in “colorblind inclusivity,” “viewpoint diversity,” and “merit-based evaluation”—all ideas that could lead to a low-scoring statement based on the starting rubric UC Santa Cruz publishes online to help guide prospective applicants.....“To receive a high score under the terms set by the rubric,” the complaint alleges, “an applicant must express agreement with specific socio-political ideas, including the view that treating individuals differently based on their race or sex is desirable.” Thus, the lawsuit argues, Haltigan must express ideas with which he disagrees to have a chance of getting hired...

......UC Santa Cruz’s requirement is part of a larger trend: Almost half of large colleges now include DEI criteria in tenure standards, while the American Enterprise Institute found that 19 percent of academic job postings required DEI statements, which were required more frequently at elite institutions. Still, there is significant opposition to the practice. A 2022 survey of nearly 1,500 U.S. faculty members found that 50 percent of respondents considered the statements “an ideological litmus test that violates academic freedom.” And the Academic Freedom Alliance, a group composed of faculty members with a wide range of political perspectives, argues that diversity statements erase “the distinction between academic expertise and ideological conformity” and create scenarios “inimical to fundamental values that should govern academic life......”

....In 2020, at the height of the racial reckoning that followed George Floyd’s murder, voters in deep-blue California reaffirmed race neutrality by an even wider margin. This continued to block the UC system’s preferred approach, which was to increase diversity in hiring by considering, not disregarding, applicants’ race. Indeed, the insistence on nondiscrimination by California voters has long been regarded with hostility by many UC system administrators. Rewarding contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion is partly their attempt to increase racial diversity among professors in a way that does not violate the law..... Around 2005, the UC system began to change how it evaluated professors. As ever, they would be judged based on teaching, research, and service. But the system-wide personnel manual was updated with a novel provision: Job candidates who showed that they promoted “diversity and equal opportunity” in teaching, research, or service could get credit for doing so....

......What began as an option to highlight work that advanced “diversity and equal opportunity” morphed over time into mandatory statements on contributions to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The shift circa 2018 from the possibility of credit for something to a forced accounting of it was important. So was the shift from the widely shared value of equal opportunity to equity (a contested and controversial concept with no widely agreed-upon meaning) and inclusion. The bundled triad of DEI is typically justified by positing that hiring a racially and ethnically diverse faculty or admitting a diverse student body is not enough—for the institution and everyone in it to thrive, the best approach (in this telling) is to treat some groups differently than others to account for structural disadvantages they suffer and to make sure everyone feels welcome, hence “inclusion.....”

.....Perhaps the most extreme developments in the UC system’s use of DEI statements are taking place on the Davis, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and Riverside campuses, where pilot programs treat mandatory diversity statements not as one factor among many in an overall evaluation of candidates, but as a threshold test. In other words, if a group of academics applied for jobs, their DEI statements would be read and scored, and only applicants with the highest DEI statement scores would make it to the next round. The others would never be evaluated on their research, teaching, or service. This is a revolutionary change in how to evaluate professors.....When UC Berkeley hired for life-sciences jobs through its pilot program, Ortner reports, 679 qualified applicants were eliminated based on their DEI statements alone. “Seventy-six percent of qualified applicants were rejected without even considering their teaching skills, their publication history, their potential for academic excellence, or their ability to contribute to their field,” he wrote. “As far as the university knew, these applicants could have well been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk......”

.....Mandatory DEI statements send the message that it’s okay for academics to chill the speech of colleagues. If half of faculty members believe that diversity statements are ideological litmus tests, fear of failing the test will chill free expression within a large cohort, even if they are wrong. Shouldn’t that alone make the half of academics who support these statements rethink their stance?.....And mandatory DEI statements send the message that viewpoint diversity and dissent are neither valuable nor necessary—that if you’ve identified the right values, a monoculture in support of them is preferable. The scoring rubric for evaluating candidates’ statements that UC Santa Cruz published declares that a superlative statement “discusses diversity, equity, and inclusion as core values of the University that every faculty member should actively contribute to advancing.” Do academics really want to assert that any value should be held by “every” faculty member?.... I do not want California voters to strip the UC system of more of its ability to self-govern, but if this hypocrisy inspires a reformist ballot initiative, administrators will deserve it, regardless of what the judiciary decides about whether they are violating the First Amendment.....

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/hypocrisy-mandatory-diversity-statements/674611/

[Blue Horseshoe 348]

 

 

[seafoam1 3,022]

Fock diversity. Nobody likes it. Some just pretend to like it because they think it makes them look good. 

It's an ugly look.

[easilyscan 924]

Brought to you by people with way too much time on their hands. 

[dogcows 1,030]

It’s convenient when somebody posts Chris Rufo and Jordan Peterson videos in the same post. It’s such a great way to instantly inform everybody that one is incapable of critical thought.

[Dizkneelande 1,099]

The guy that parrots msnbc talking points all day is a big critical thinker 

[seafoam1 3,022]

1 hour ago, dogcows said:

It’s convenient when somebody posts Chris Rufo and Jordan Peterson videos in the same post. It’s such a great way to instantly inform everybody that one is incapable of critical thought.

Your post here mimics what every liberal would say. Talk about incapable of critical thought. 

[Blue Horseshoe 348]

On 7/30/2023 at 4:27 AM, dogcows said:

It’s convenient when somebody posts Chris Rufo and Jordan Peterson videos in the same post. It’s such a great way to instantly inform everybody that one is incapable of critical thought.

 

 

DEI firm allegedly called White principal who died by suicide a 'weed' that should be cut down

.....The CEO of an influential equity firm – KOJO Institute – which lists the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a former client – allegedly referred to a White principal who recently killed himself as a "weed" during a 2021 equity training after he disagreed with her claims about critical race theory.....The Toronto principal – Richard Bilkszto – cited the KOJO trainings from 2021, as well as the professional fallout that resulted from the incident – as factors which caused a depressive episode, according to a suit. Bilkszto committed suicide on July 14, after the suit was filed. ...."If you listen to the way in which he was spoken to, he was being told that his opinions and beliefs were less valuable because of the color of his skin, that’s racist...."

.....After his death, Bilkszto's family said the allegations listed in the lawsuit factored into his suicide. ....CRT is a lens which generally holds that society is rigged against certain groups on the basis of skin color. It decries the idea of succeeding by merit as a "myth," and ranks races into privilege categories, with White people considered the most privileged. ...."We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your Whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people?" – Kike Ojo-Thompson to Richard Bilkszto

.....During a training for administrators at a Toronto school district, KOJO CEO Ojo-Thompson, claimed Canada was a racist country with deeply embedded oppressive systems, even more so than the U.S., according to the lawsuit. ...."We are stepping on necks, we are kneeling on necks, we are Derek Chauvin-ing a whole group of people… Patriarchy is killing you, capitalism is killing you, and White supremacy is taking your soul, but what do I know?" Thompson said.....Ojo-Thompson proceeded to call Canada "the bastion of White supremacy and colonialism," according to the suit....

....Another trainer at KOJO, interjected, claiming Bilkszto was an "apologist" for racism, in front of all his administrative peers, according to the suit. Bilkszto's superiors and colleagues did not intervene when the alleged racial comments against his "Whiteness" were made. ....Ojo-Thompson proceeded "to publicly humiliate Bilkszto and make an example of him," going so far as to liken him to a "'weed' that needed to be cut down," the lawsuit said. ...."Bilkszto left the training session feeling humiliated, attacked, unsupported, harassed and alone. He suffered mental distress as a result," the lawsuit said. It added that the statements from KOJO's training amounted to racial harassment per the district's anti-discrimination policies.....

.....After being allegedly "humiliated" in front of his senior colleagues, the superintendent – Sheryl Robinson-Petrazzini – publicly thanked KOJO on Twitter, and referenced the "resistance" faced during the training, according to the suit. When Bilkszto asked the superintendent to remove the tweet, believing it to be a de facto endorsement of Ojo-Thompson's characterizations, the superintendent refused, the suit said. ...."It just breaks my heart that he was treated so poorly," said FAIR's executive director. "Not only was he treated poorly by his DEI instructor, but also his supervisors who amplified those accusations and his colleagues who were silent."....Bilkszto was then called in for professional reprimand in relation to his ideological disagreement with Ojo-Thompson. When Bilkszto attended the next KOJO training, Ojo-Thompson attacked him again unprompted, while laughing at one point, according to the suit. ....

"It is rare that when teaching something that you actually get a real life of the concept unfolding right before everyone’s eyes and ears, and we had that privilege last week, so I want to open by going back to the concept of resistance," Ojo-Thomson said, according to the suit. ...."One of the ways that White supremacy is upheld… is through resistance and like I said, as I began to speak earlier we had, I am so lucky [laughs], who would have thought my luck would have showed up so well last week, that we got perfect evidence of a wonderful example of resistance that all of you got to bear witness to, and we are going to talk about it, because it doesn’t get better than this," she continued, according to the suit.... 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/dei-firm-allegedly-called-white-principal-died-suicide-weed-should-cut-down

[Blue Horseshoe 348]

On 7/30/2023 at 4:27 AM, dogcows said:

It’s convenient when somebody posts Chris Rufo and Jordan Peterson videos in the same post. It’s such a great way to instantly inform everybody that one is incapable of critical thought.

 

 

Few Americans say conservatives can speak freely on college campuses, an AP-NORC/UChicago poll shows

....Americans view college campuses as far friendlier to liberals than to conservatives when it comes to free speech, with adults across the political spectrum seeing less tolerance for those on the right, according to a new poll. Overall, 47% of adults say liberals have “a lot” of freedom to express their views on college campuses, while just 20% said the same of conservatives, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.....Debates over First Amendment rights have occasionally flared on college campuses in recent years, with conflicts arising over guest speakers who express polarizing views, often from the political right.....Stanford University became a flashpoint this year when students shouted down a conservative judge who was invited to speak. More recently, a conservative Princeton University professor was drowned out while discussing free speech at Washington College, a small school in Maryland....

.....Overall, Republicans see a clear double standard on college campuses. Just 9% said conservatives can speak their minds, while 58% said liberals have that freedom, according to the polling. They were also slightly less likely than Americans overall to see campuses as respectful and inclusive places for conservatives.....The protest at Stanford was one of six campus speeches across the U.S. that ended in significant disruption this year, with another 11 last year, according to a database by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group.....About three in five Americans (62%) say that a major purpose of higher education is to support the free exchange and debate of different ideas and values. Even more U.S. adults say college’s main purpose is to teach students specific skills (82%), advance knowledge and ideas (78%) or teach students to be critical thinkers (76%). Also, 66% said a major purpose is to create a respectful and inclusive learning environment.....

https://apnews.com/article/free-speech-college-campuses-0b2811fb35c9c6288b7517da7c9affd3

[Blue Horseshoe 348]

 

[EternalShinyAndChrome 4,101]

On 7/30/2023 at 8:19 AM, seafoam1 said:

Your post here mimics what every liberal would say. Talk about incapable of critical thought. 

Liberals - by definition - are incapable of critical thought.  Liberalism is a cult disguised as a political ideology and "cults" are incapable of critical thought as well as dissent amongst it's ranks.  They are zealots, not thinkers.

[RLLD 4,230]

44 minutes ago, EternalShinyAndChrome said:

Liberals - by definition - are incapable of critical thought.  Liberalism is a cult disguised as a political ideology and "cults" are incapable of critical thought as well as dissent amongst it's ranks.  They are zealots, not thinkers.

I submit it is even worse than that.  

They are Maoists.  Their design is that the only acceptable thought is liberal thought.  If you do not conform to them, then you are evil.  This approach creates something of a line in the sand. You cannot think critically, because to do so is to question the authority of liberalism....and you risk being labelled and cancelled (or excommunicated).  

In using this approach they are also limiting their actions.  They cannot switch gears, pivot....or change action...because to do so is to violate the paradigm of the religion of liberalism.

This is why they are so keen to redefine terms.....their religion cannot change so the terminology has to.  They box themselves into failed policies that they cannot diverge from.