Not that anyone necessarily agrees with me, but I’m a supporter of affirmative action, of diversity. From a group of otherwise fully qualified candidates, bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, and that includes people’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and, yes, social class, a deeper pool is created from which better ideas rise. Don’t hate me, and no, this is not the subject for discussion here, but merely a preface.
It’s because of my belief in the value of diversity that I say this to the University of California at Berkeley: you fucked it all up.
The University of California has been requiring prospective faculty members to affirm that they support diversity. This was Orwellian in its own right—reminiscent of the university system’s 1950s loyalty oaths, which required faculty to attest that they were not members of the Communist Party.
A loyalty oath? How very McCarthy of you, even if the campus reaction isn’t quite the same. Whether a display of virtue or a demand of ideological obeisance, it’s not the cause, but the effect.
It now appears that at one campus, UC-Berkeley, the diversity initiative goes much further than previously understood. Whether a candidate has proposed a specific, concrete plan to advance diversity is now being used as a litmus test for some positions. No candidate who fails the test can even be considered for employment.
Berkeley has a rubric, because academics adore rubrics, and before anyone’s qualifications are considered, they must first pass the litmus test.
Sure enough, a report on Berkeley’s diversity initiative—recently publicized by Jerry Coyne and John Cochrane—shows that eight different departments affiliated with the life sciences used a diversity rubric to weed out applicants for positions. This was the first step: In one example, of a pool of 894 candidates was narrowed down to 214 based solely on how convincing their plans to spread diversity were.
It’s understandable that a large applicant pool has to be vetted, but when 76% of the applicants are rejected not based on their qualifications to do the job, but on their plan to advance “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” they’ve lost the message.
What exactly would such a plan look like? Would a job-seeker promise that all her research will conclude that racism is the cause, no matter what the problem is? Would a plan to hire the majority gender in college only be good enough? Notably, it’s not just a matter of diversity, but “equity,” which is distinguished from equality based on outcome rather than opportunity. Would a plan to mentor “underrepresented” students be good enough if they were male? What if the promise was to mentor no more than the percentage of students of any particular hue that were statistically available in the general population?
Then again, what this fails to do, and fails miserably, is show the respect due every applicant, particularly those whom it’s intended to help. Are they so unqualified, so incompetent, so inadequate, that they can’t compete with every other applicant on their own substantive merits?
Berkeley rejected 76 percent of qualified applicants without even considering their teaching skills, their publication history, their potential for academic excellence or their ability to contribute to their field. As far as the university knew, these applicants could well have been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk, or they might have been outstanding and innovative educators who would make a significant difference in students’ lives.
Maybe the next Jonas Salk will be black, female and blind. Maybe not. So what? Maybe the next Jonas Salk will be far more focused on finding a cure for polio than devising a plan for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Maybe that’s why a university should hire them, because they are there to teach, to research, to think, and not to babysit the Diversity Administrator.
The tail here isn’t just wagging the dog, but has strangled the critter to death. Sure, there should be vetting of the candidates based on their academic qualities, their capacity to perform their scholarly duties, their potential to be that next Jonas Salk. After that, and only after that, should any question of diversity enter the mix.
While the closest I’ve ever come to Jonas Salk was swallowing a sugar cube as a kid, it occurs to me that I have no clue what should be included in a diversity statement if I applied for a job teaching at Berkeley. Would I promise to give all black students an A? Would I promise to hold special office hours only for women? What if I promised to treat every student as an individual, to rise or fall based on performance, never knowing or caring about race or gender, and using my time to encourage and support the most promising students without regard to their identity?
Or maybe I would get the job if I promised that, upon an offer of employment, I would defer so that a marginalized person could be offered the position instead of me. What could possibly demonstrate my commitment better?
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Special office hours for women has been the downfall of more than a few in academe.
The couch of extra credit also represents poor planning in our modern age.
Notably, last month, UC Berkeley officially “shot its Boalt,” having aspired to do so for some time. Some of Boalt’s personal views were objectionable in hindsight. The school thinks “Berkeley” is a better name, with more common recognition.
Apparently, nobody has told them that Berkeley was a wretched white colonialist who once founded a school to train “missionaries” for the cultural subjugation of Bermuda. (These people are morons).
When Tyre is unavailable to provide the irrelevant factoid that everyone already knows, you fill the gap. You’re a trooper, Bruce.
My work has been done for me.
Oh no you don’t. You’re not getting away that easy. I know you’ve got plenty to say on this subject. Give it up, old man.
Is that like a license to kill?
Why do you test me, Tyre. James Tyre.
OK, OK. Loyalty oaths in the University of California system weren’t just a McCarthy era thing. The requirement wasn’t abandoned until earlier in the current millennium.
And the oath wasn’t required just of those in a position to influence young impressionable minds. Even the janitors had to swear the oath. I know I slept better every night knowing that the cleanup crew wasn’t a bunch of commies.
SHG,
You are a sly fellow. You also like cats such as Orange Cat. Your reference to Schrödinger in the title caught my rheumy eye.
I have every reason to believe that Herr Schrödinger did not give a rat’s ass about equity, diversity and inclusion. But he explained how a cat could be both alive and dead at the same in the world of quantum physics.
For present purposes, the cat is dead at UC Berkeley and that august institution is damn well going to make sure that the cat remains dead. More’s the pity
All the best.
RGK
He did say that if he got the job he would defer. That’s a lot easier to do when the cats dead.
Of course, at that point, Orange Cat is effectively White-Walker Cat, and it won’t stay dead unless they can put it down with weapons made from dragon glass. I highly doubt that UC Berkeley has any dragon glass, on account of the people who worked the mines having never told Berkeley’s wretched, white, colonialist forebear where any of the mines were located. So, there is that, and they have only themselves to blame.
This is overwrought. I’ve read hundreds of diversity statements. Special office hours, slanted grading, etc, are not part of them. Outreach is.
What will the candidate do to increase accessibility for non-traditional students? Will they work with HS outreach programs, work with research programs targeting minority and poor students, etc? The UC is partially funded by CA taxpayers, from the richest to the poorest, and in theory is there to serve all of them as well. Large portions of CA students, even ones that would be successful in UCs, have difficulty navigating admissions and funding, and the UC has decided to focus some of their energy on increasing accessibility for underserved students.
There is a lot of reasonable arguments about how the UC should do that, if it is a good use of resources, and whether their current methods are efficient. Hell, I’ve made a lot of those arguments. This post and the Reason article start from poorly understanding the topic and serve to make everyone less informed.
Finally, if someone can’t write a decent 1 page essay after college, graduate work, and post-graduate work, they aren’t the next Salk. From my experience, the top research/teaching applicants all have solid diversity statements (doing outreach really isn’t that hard or time consuming). Even though I think using the diversity statement as a litmus test is probably a little backwards, Berkley isn’t losing otherwise qualified applicants, because those otherwise qualified applicants could write the essay. Cutting the applicant pool from 800 to 200 still leaves 200 dense research applications to wade through, and I pity the faculty committee that has that job.
I’m glad you gave the alternate perspective. I’ll leave it to others to decide whether you’ve made your case.
Hanging around high schools looking for young transgender students to take under wing is certainly what I would look for in a new hire.
More seriously, I sometimes wonder if it’s as shallow as it seems to be or I’m missing something. From your explanation, it’s that shallow. Sure, any fool can write a one-page essay replete with empty platitudes, jargon and promises, but to what serious end? Your conflation of a publicly funded university as if that explains why profs aren’t profs, but tour guides, is not only unpersuasive, but irrational. New profs also don’t cook for the poor in the cafeteria or drive them to the supermarket, but that’s because that isn’t the job.
You use empty phrases like “increase accessibility for non-traditional students.” So hold classes at night? Don’t give reading assignments? Don’t expect too much as they’re too busy wiping tushies to learn what they need to get a degree?
Sorry, but you’re just making noise.
If the dean says there are enough “non-traditional students” to hold an evening session, so she assigns you the evening session. Serving the needs of students is a perfectly fine thing to do, but provides no justification for a diversity statement. On the other hand, if a prof discriminates against a protected class, that’s a different story.
Does anyone write an essay saying their plan is to discriminate? I doubt it. Beyond that, they do as their employer instructs, as should every employee, whether they are in ideological sync or not.
” Serving the needs of students is a perfectly fine thing to do, but provides no justification for a diversity statement.”
It’s a fair point, you could call it something else, but it doesn’t really change the reality that the vast majority of these statements are about accessibility. For minorities, for poor students, for those that work, etc.
“they do as their employer instructs, as should every employee”
That’s not really how a faculty position works. Maybe it should be, but most profs, especially in the UC, are independent. They can get assigned classes, but that is pretty much it. But teaching classes is at most ~50% of the job, and advancement and tenure is largely based on other aspects of the job. The UC wants improved access and improved diversity, so its part of the job. How it gets accomplished is up to the individual profs.
You’re confusing support for diversity with the issue here, proposing a diversity plan in order to get a school to even look at your qualifications. If the school wants you to be diverse, be diverse. If it’s part of the job and you’re not doing it, tell you to do it or fire you. That profs are “independent” is malarkey; they get paychecks. They just believe they’re special. They’re not when it comes to the ordinary performance of job duties.
When I say independent, its not malarkey, it’s baked into the system. Disciplining and advancement is an incredibly regimented process, and there isn’t really “bosses” in most cases. I’m not saying profs are special, I’m saying there are very few tools available for a chair or a dean to get a prof to do X, except in very narrow cases of assigning classes to teach. Which is at most ~50% of the job. If they want a prof to do outreach, they can ask, but they can’t assign it.
You might think it should be different. You might think tenure should not exist. That is reasonable. That doesn’t change the current reality, which is that profs don’t have a normal boss that can fire them.
If it’s part of the job, then you can be directed to do it. If not, then it’s not part of the job, and you can’t simply proclaim it is because you want to weasel your way around the glaring hole in you assertion. You can’t have it both ways.
I’ll try one last time and let it rest.
I’m saying a huge part of “the job” is nebulous and there aren’t good mechanisms to force a prof to do something, nor do they really have a traditional boss. Instead, you get evaluated periodically by your peers to see if you’ve done enough in terms of teaching, research, and service.
“Service” is about 10% of the job which includes committees, meetings, and outreach, etc. When a prof goes up for advancement, they get evaluated on that aspect. It’s pretty minor compared to research, but if your peers think you’re not “doing enough” you can get dinged.
But there is no actual standard, nor can a chair or dean force you into service. They can ask you to do something, you can say no, and it really doesn’t hurt you, as long as 2 years later, your peers look at your file and say, “sure, they did enough”.
Is service(including outreach) part of the job? Yes, it is included in the contract.
Is it specified what exactly it is? No. But the UC has made it clear outreach is included, which is typical for most public schools.
Can you be penalized for not doing specific things you are asked to by your “boss”? No. Happens all the time.
Can you be penalized for not doing “enough”? Yeah, based on a periodic peer evaluation with no actual firm guidelines for what “enough” is.
When I say they are independent, I mean once they are in the system it is really hard to get them to do any one specific thing. You can periodically say they aren’t doing “enough” and refuse to give them a raise, but that is pretty much it, especially after tenure.
I’m not saying that is good (it has pros and cons), but it is how it is. Service is part of the signed job contract, and service includes outreach. You can’t be forced to do any specific act of service, but you are evaluated on how much and how effective you are.
Miles:
Profs aren’t tour guides, but sometimes that is part of the job. I would love a world where smart people of every background had a frictionless path to study a valuable field like engineering. A lot of kids don’t. They come from families that have never navigated admissions, and that’s more of a barrier than it should be.
Of your list of, yes, I hold classes at night. It can suck sometime, but many of my students work full time, because they are paying their own freight. Dropping reading assignments? No. Making my notes available and legible so that students that can’t afford a $200 textbook can still learn? Yes.
Perhaps this is the difference between how a lawyer views words and an academic, or perhaps this is a matter of beginning with an unquestioned belief, but either way, you can’t say this and expect it to fly unchallenged:
The question is why, because it’s no more a “part of the job” than anything anyone wants to call “part of the job,” and saying so doesn’t make it so. And if your student can’t afford a $200 textbook, why are you requiring them to buy $200 textbooks?
” saying so doesn’t make it so.”
I honestly don’t get what you’re saying, and have a feeling we aren’t going to get anywhere, but I appreciate you engaging. It’s part of the job, because the taxpayers, through the CA leg, have defined the UC mission to serve all the students of CA, in addition to research. That is the UC mission, and faculty are hired, on taxpayer dime, to pursue that mission. That’s the job. Maybe you or I think that mission should be different, making the job different, but that is what it is.
“And if your student can’t afford a $200 textbook, why are you requiring them to buy $200 textbooks?”
That is exactly why I don’t, and why the UC has been trying to encourage profs use open source or other alternatives. But it takes time to make those changes, and profs that want to.
No need to appreciate my engaging. It’s my blawg. It’s kinda what I do. That said, no need to do another run over this turf. I’ve no doubt you believe what you’re saying. I’ve no doubt that anyone who hasn’t drank the Kool-Aid ain’t buying.
What’s striking is that your words really are empty. You cite to your “mission to serve all the students” as if it’s an actual thing to do, rather than a generic and vague aspirational statement, and you appear to sincerely not grasp the utter meaningless of your rhetoric. Fixing their plumbing serves them as well, but it doesn’t say “serve” means fix their plumbing. It also doesn’t say “serve” means go to high schools and solicit poor kids. Teaching is the job. The rest is whatever you want it to be, but it’s not the job.
I trust your good intentions, but your argument is has no logical connection, and your inability to see it is stunning.
David:
As above, I’ll try one last time.
“Teaching is the job. The rest is whatever you want it to be, but it’s not the job.”
That is wrong. At the UC, like most unis, the faculty contract includes research, teaching, and service. All are included in the signed contract and all are part of your advancement evaluation. Typical loads might by 35% teaching, 55% research, 10% service, as an example.
You might think the contract should only be teaching. Or just teaching and research. But that is not reality. Service is part of the contract, part of the expectations, it is part of the job. You can, in part, discharge your service obligations by doing outreach.
You say it is vague. Yep, you are 100% correct. It is vague. Profs are expected to do service, but what is “enough” is never explicitly defined. Nor what the right mix of committee/outreach/organization/etc is. Because it’s poorly defined, profs get to make their own choices about what the right mix and approach is. They have no boss telling them they need a certain outreach activity, diversity activity, committee work.
This plays out pretty much how it sounds. Different profs focus on different things. Some have high investment in school outreach, or community outreach, or just serving on a lot committees. Most do some mix. The UC (typical for many public unis) has emphasized including efforts to improve diversity (typically outreach and increasing accessibility) in that service chunk of the job.
This is in the wrong place, but you ran out of real estate.
You wander into a place occupied by lawyers and judges–people that actually use and assimilate words–and throw a couple hundred jumbled-up junk phrases, expecting them to be accepted without review. You then counter with more crapulence.
Son, on a basic level, that’ll never fly in this here Hotel. Trying to fake your way through will just get you stuck in the tunnel. Stuck in the tunnel is nowhere to be.
“…CA students, even ones that would be successful in UCs, have difficulty navigating admissions and funding…” Did anyone stop to think that may be part of UC’s equity and diversity problem? Or is that too simple??
I sit on a faculty hiring committee and had to go through equity and diversity training. It’s 2 hours I’ll never get back. What administration has lost sight of is the students. The focus should not be on equity and diversity but can you teach students what they need to know.
There are not enough minority students in higher education, but that problem starts much further down the education food chain than college. One of the largest divisions in community colleges is the one that teaches basic reading, writing and math. Students leaving high school just don’t have the skills for college level work. Mandating equity and diversity is easy; solving education disparity is hard.
> There are not enough minority students in higher education
How many are “enough”? By what standard?
Good point Dan.
I don’t know.
Maybe when everyone that wants an education is able to get one?
They can’t do that now? Which schools reject students because they’re minorities?
Any literate person may obtain “an education” at their public library. The ware of which UC Berkeley is purveyor is not “an education,” but a bourgeois stamp of social accreditation.
Burban:
I agree. I’ve had to take the equity/diversity training and it was not a useful 2 hours.
And yes, I think this is often far too late in the process to intervene. I think CA has, to put it mildly, a lot of problems in its lower levels of education. The UC is not in a position to fix that.
It can do outreach. It can show students that have no exposure to college that it can be somewhere they can succeed. I have worked with students that are whip smart and hard-working, but have never even considering anything other than a construction job. Showing them other opportunities doesn’t change all the problems, but it’s not hard to do either. If I work ~70 hrs a week and 1 or 2 is dedicated to that, I think my research and teaching can spare that.
“Mandating equity and diversity is easy; solving education disparity is hard.”
Yep.
“What will the candidate do to increase accessibility for non-traditional students?”
Aren’t there entire highly-funded departments filled with multiple people who have that as their sole job?
This is like requiring that every would-be professor is also a trained plumber.
What does promoting diversity in microbiology mean? Maybe you refer to good bacteria as “she”, the bad bacteria as “he.” (Bacteria don’t have sexes). Or do you promise not to discriminate by the color of the cell?
Simple: through a commitment to gram-positivity, thus avoiding the stain of safranin.
“As far as the university knew, these applicants could well have been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk, or they might have been outstanding and innovative educators who would make a significant difference in students’ lives.”
Since both Albert Einstein and Jonas Salk were white (don’t even talk about religion *clutches pearls*), natch they wouldn’t want them anyway so the plan is working as desired.
The next ones may not be. Then again, they may not be in the 200 who make the ideological cut, either.
As the new chairman of the physics department, I would stop teaching that F=ma, because it priveleges force over other immutable characteristics. Instead, we will be teaching ma/F=1, which promotes equality and unity of purpose.
How is that for a plan?
I thought Prof. Bainbridge’s diversity statement was rather good. I wonder what will be done with it.
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules. smh]