This is an end result of Affirmative Action: It is quite scary

Parent Cafe
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<p>The president of the University of Oregon has backed away from some of the more controversial parts of a proposed five-year diversity plan after some professors balked at it. Because of their objections, the plan will be sent to a committee of faculty members for further consideration. </p>

<p>The draft plan, which was released this month, called for changing tenure and post-tenure reviews to include assessments of professors' "cultural competency." It also called for hiring 30 to 40 professors in the next seven years in several diversity-related areas, including race, gender, disability, and gay-and-lesbian studies. </p>

<p>The plan sparked complaints from many professors. Some were frustrated by what they saw as a secretive process that created the plan, saying that faculty members did not have a large enough role in drafting it. Others were disturbed by the proposal to change tenure reviews. </p>

<p>"I was hired to teach chemistry and do research," said Michael Kellman, a chemistry professor. "I wasn't hired to be evaluated and even interrogated about cultural competency, whatever that is." </p>

<p>In a letter to the president, David B. Frohnmayer, 24 professors called the draft plan "frightening and offensive." They complained that it would spend too much money on "diversity-related bureaucracy." </p>

<p>Mr. Frohnmayer said in an interview on Thursday that administrators had "taken a step back from the draft plan, given the extent of the response." </p>

<p>"We're wedded to the objectives of the plan, but not to particular steps in any lockstep way," he said. "We're a community that lives to move with a greater sense of consensus." </p>

<p>The plan foresees increasing diversity by changing "the ethnic makeup of the freshman class, the racial and gender balance of tenured faculty, accessibility for the disabled, and the range of perspectives shared in campus classrooms around issues of sexual orientation, gender identity, religious differences, and other characteristics that make up the campus community." </p>

<p>Mr. Frohnmayer has sent the plan to a committee, which is made up mostly of professors, and asked them to develop a new document that more people at the university can agree upon. "It was prominently labeled as a draft," he said. "It was never meant as a fait accompli. This was a first attempt to develop a dialogue." </p>

<p>At the same time, the president said he understood the concerns some professors had about the phrase "cultural competency." To him, he said, the phrase means that every student, regardless of background, has an opportunity to learn. A diversity center at the university defines the term as "an active process and ongoing pursuit of self-reflection, learning, skill development, and adaptation, practiced at individual and systems levels, in order to effectively engage a culturally diverse population." </p>

<p>Regardless, the president said, not defining the words in the draft plan was a mistake. </p>

<p>"I think that's a legitimate concern because there has tended to be a buzz around those words," he said. "There are those that believe this will create a role for some unseen culture cop." </p>

<p>Not all faculty members were disturbed by the diversity plan. Matthew Dennis, a professor of history, said some critics had overreacted, although he acknowledged that the plan could have been written better and agreed that not defining some terms was a mistake. </p>

<p>"There are reasonable concerns that can be worked out, especially if reasonable discussion aren't disrupted by incendiary discussions coming from off campus," Mr. Dennis said. </p>

<p>This month, as the plan was sparking controversy, its chief architect announced that he was leaving the university. Gregory J. Vincent, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity at Oregon, is moving to the University of Texas at Austin to become vice provost for inclusion and cross-cultural effectiveness. Mr. Vincent has said his decision was not related to the reaction to the diversity plan. Mr. Frohnmayer, the president, said the timing of Mr. Vincent's departure was coincidental.</p>

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<p>Yeah Oregon's always been pretty crazy about diversity kind of stuff. Aren't they the school that had reserved spots in classes for minority students? I've heard from other people in higher education that this trend is happening all over the nation and many good teachers up for tenure get denied because they're not "diverse" enough. It's just another reason most sane people are suspicious of academia and, unfortunately, the learning process is going to suffer from it unless there's a large enough backlash.</p>

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<p>Richard Rodriguez has some interesting essays on the topic of diversity in education (particularly about the diversity of professors). </p>

<p>The one I read was in his autobiography, Hunger of Memory. Short result: he is against affirmative action and turned down positions at prestigious universities that were offered to him, he feels, perhaps more because of race than his accomplishments.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
the learning process is going to suffer from it unless there's a large enough backlash

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I don't understand? I'm not a particularly big fan of quota-based affirmative action plans, but I don't see how the learning process would suffer from having more female, Latino, and African-American professors.</p>

<p>It seems to me that elite college education has been dominated by white males for long enough.</p>

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<p>If colleges are so gung ho in getting diversity in their student body, it makes sense that they do the same with their professors and administrators. Including the adcoms.</p>

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<p>Stories like this always seem to duck the real issue:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Any group is most likely to select for future membership new members that look and act just like current members. (In some mountain communities, we called that "inbreeding"...)</p></li>
<li><p>College departments will, left to their own, pick new colleagues (new faculty) that do their research in the current departmental style on the current departmental hot areas.</p></li>
<li><p>to the degree that outsiders (OK, in most cases, the outsiders will be minorities and/or women) approach their research a different way, looking at different problems, they will be screened out.</p></li>
<li><p>gender based differences to problem solving are well known</p></li>
<li><p>problem solving differences due to different life experiences (be that racial, ethnic, SES based...) are known.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>So yea, without a big push, a big boot in the bottom, maybe even a quota?, college faculties are unlikely to embrace a broader outlook, sometimes called diversity.</p>

<p>The sad part is that faculties usually criticize diversity moves as weakening academic quality, without ever doing the experiment. Worse, since they define quality normed to their current approach to the problems they like, the whole process becomes circular. </p>

<p>Are quotas the solution? Probably not, but it is curious that nonacademic workplaces that have used quotas, whether formal or informal, have not always suffered from the experience, although some so called qualified white males have, of course, suffered.</p>

<p>Quotas are usually a last step solution when other means have failed. I do wonder if the academy has not failed with other solutions and may need a dose of quota medicine?</p>

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<p>If they truly wanted diversity, they would target diversity of thought. As it is, whether a professor is white, black, Asian, Hispanic, man or woman, they are predominately of one political view.</p>

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<p>I am on the faculty of a major state university. If I were to have to demonstrate "cultural competency" as a condition of my tenure, I'd leave in a heartbeat. This is crazy.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
If they truly wanted diversity, they would target diversity of thought. As it is, whether a professor is white, black, Asian, Hispanic, man or woman, they are predominately of one political view.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Makes for a nice soundbyte. But, can you cite one single example of a professor being asked his or her political party affiliation before being hired?</p>

<p>I think Swarthmore history professor Tim Burke puts the issue in perspective with his "village idiot" comment:</p>

<p>
[quote]
No one is ever asked, bluntly, in the humanities what their political affiliation is at the time of hiring. The discussion of the “politics” of a candidate in history or anthropology has never, in my own experience, involved any speculation about political affiliation. If there is a conversation about “politics”, it is likely to be about much more arcane, disciplinary arguments, about what specialization or methodology a person uses. I’ve occasionally heard someone pronounce this or that methodology or form of scholarship “reactionary”, but that’s a highly mobile epithet and can be applied to almost anything, including ideas and forms of practice that are highly, intensely leftist on the general map of American political life. To ask whether someone was a “Democrat” or even a “leftist” or “liberal” (or “conservative”) in a discussion of hiring would be like confessing that you’re the village idiot—it would seem a hopelessly unsophisticated way of thinking.

[/quote]
</p>

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<p>
[quote]
But, can you cite one single example of a professor being asked his or her political party affiliation before being hired?

[/quote]
Oh, that's such a straw man. No one discriminates so overtly, these days. Smith College professor Stanley Rothman provides his perspective here, in an interview article entitled "Purging Conservatives from College Faculties":
<a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=18118%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=18118&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>There was another, younger Smith College professor who was denied tenure, because of his views. He was such a great teacher that the girls went to bat for him, and he got his tenure. He wrote several articles about his experience, which I will try to find when I return from tonight's commitments, if someone else doesn't do it first.</p>

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<p>Left-Wing Bias in Education Schools Is Overstated by Conservative Critics, 2 Reports Suggest
By JENNIFER JACOBSON
Washington
Conservatives' fear of left-wing bias in schools of education is overblown -- at least in programs of educational administration -- according to two reports on training programs for school principals that the American Enterprise Institute released here on Wednesday.
The reports, "Learning to Lead? What Gets Taught in Principal-Preparation Programs" and "Textbook Leadership? An Analysis of Leading Books Used in Principal Preparation," were published by Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance and are available on its Web site.
Frederick M. Hess, director of education-policy studies at the institute, and Andrew P. Kelly, a researcher there, conducted the studies on which the reports are based. The reports' chief finding is that such programs do a poor job of preparing principals to manage their teachers and to hold them accountable.
But given the polarized political climate on many college campuses, the finding on ideological bias, or lack thereof, was one of the reports' more interesting conclusions. It's particularly interesting because the institute is a bastion of conservative thinking on public-policy issues.
In the study that produced "Learning to Lead," Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly analyzed a national cross section of 31 principal-preparation programs and reviewed more than 200 course syllabi, covering almost 2,500 weeks of courses. They found that only about 12 percent of the course weeks focused on exposing principal candidates to different educational and pedagogical philosophies, to debates about the nature and purpose of public schooling, and to examinations of the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic context of education.
Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly did find, however, that instruction devoted to such topics was biased, with 65 percent of those course weeks qualifying as left-leaning, 35 percent as neutral, and less than 1 percent as right-leaning.
According to the report, Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly labeled left-leaning course weeks as those that advocated concepts such as social justice and multiculturalism, focused on inequality and racial discrimination, emphasized notions of "silenced voices and child-centered instruction," or criticized testing and school-choice reform.
Right-leaning course weeks were those that criticized ideas of social justice and multiculturalism, viewed focusing on inequality or discrimination as engaging in "victimhood," advocated phonics or "back-to-basics instruction," or framed discussions of testing or school-choice reform in a positive light.
Some course weeks identified as left-leaning included "The role of the curriculum in legitimating social inequality" and "What role(s) do race and social class play in school reform? Is social Darwinism a useful reform concept?"
Course weeks labeled as balanced or neutral included "Are unions good or bad for public education? What does the evidence say?" and "What should schools teach? Phonics vs. whole language; multicultural education/teaching for diversity."
The single course week identified as right-leaning -- "The state and local politics of education reform" -- was so dubbed because the primary reading was by a well-known conservative scholar.
"Interestingly, many of the traditional bogeymen flagged by education schools were not much in evidence," the report says. "For instance, the words 'diversity' and 'diverse' and 'multiculturalism' and 'multicultural' appeared in only 3 percent of all course weeks."
In their other report, "Textbook Leadership," Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly found that left-leaning bias in the textbooks assigned was largely absent. The word "diversity" appeared just 4.3 times per 100 pages of text, and "multicultural" appeared less than once per 100 pages. </p>

<p>Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education</p>

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<p>IntDad wrote:
[quote]
Makes for a nice soundbyte. But, can you cite one single example of a professor being asked his or her political party affiliation before being hired?

[/quote]

Your attempt to belittle the comment from fundingfather by labeling it a soundbite is acknowledged. Your question is irrelevant, and as the learned professor you quoted put it, "unsophisticated." Swarthmore is so far left overall that faculty and students self-select--at least that's what their tour guide told us when we visited :(. They don't ask questions like that because they don't HAVE to ask; they wouldn't invite anyone to interview who didn't ascribe to the latest "deconstructionist" theory. Exactly as newmassdad pointed out.</p>

<p>To get back to the point of the thread, the idea of a litmus test of this sort for faculty is absolutely repulsive, and as I see it, counterproductive. It would only serve to alienate people by insisting we all ascribe to the primacy of the group identity, instead of the primacy of the individual. It sounds to me somewhat like the Spanish Inquisition, when the torture victims had to guess at what the correct answer might be. "Astronomy: How do you intend to address the implications of the Big Bang theory on the extended Hispanic family? Physics: Do you intend to be sensitive to the modern feminist thought that Einstein stole all his work from his wife? Chemistry: Don't you think it might be possible that Mendeleev was gay? How would this affect the order of the elements, and their propensities to combine with each other? Art History: Is it possible that Titian was a Wiccan hater, given the number of "lost souls" and demons in his paintings? How could we consider this to be great Art (with a capital A)?"</p>

<p>IMO, the ultimate outcome will be that colleges and universities which continue to promote this stuff will find their academic standing and appeal to students decrease proportionately. At least I hope so.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly did find, however, that instruction devoted to such topics was biased, with 65 percent of those course weeks qualifying as left-leaning, 35 percent as neutral, and less than 1 percent as right-leaning.

[/quote]

There you go...this absolutely confirms the conclusion of the headline, right?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Left-Wing Bias in Education Schools Is Overstated by Conservative Critics, 2 Reports Suggest

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I guess left wing bias doesn't really show up until the proportion is 90/10/<1. I stand corrected.</p>

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<p>I'm confused. Stanley Rothman is a Prof. Emerius at Smith College, who presumably received tenure notwithstanding his visibility as a "conservative" thinker.</p>

<p>His co-auther, Robert Lerner, was a prof. at Syracuse, Smith, and Johns Hopkins before forming a conservative research firm which is probably the leading anti-affirmative action research firm in the country.</p>

<p>Do these conservative professors not disprove their own "theory" of discrimination. Last time I checked, Smith College is not widely known as a lone bastion of conservatism.</p>

<p>I did, however, get a chuckle out of Rothman's assertion that "conservatives" tend to not be "confrontational" in their politics. That's a good one. I wonder if he can keep a straight face?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Swarthmore is so far left overall that faculty and students self-select--at least that's what their tour guide told us when we visited . They don't ask questions like that because they don't HAVE to ask; they wouldn't invite anyone to interview who didn't ascribe to the latest "deconstructionist" theory.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Perhaps you would be interested in another quote from the same tenured Swarthmore History Professor, Tim Burke:</p>

<p>
[quote]
The entire class of people with postgraduate degrees skew significantly Democratic in registration: it’s worth asking how much academic departments differ from this general proportion. Granted, when you hit 100%, as with Duke's Department of History, you're obviously different from the general population of people with Ph.Ds, but I wonder how much so. (Extra bonus point: can anybody guess my political affiliation? Hint: Swarthmore's History Department is not 100% registered Democrat.)

[/quote]
</p>

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<p>Since the Republican party (nominally regarded as "conservative", although that's open for debate) has controlled the White House for much of the last 35 years, where have all of their political appointments gone to college? Are they all graduates of Bob Jones U?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I did, however, get a chuckle out of Rothman's assertion that "conservatives" tend to not be "confrontational" in their politics. That's a good one. I wonder if he can keep a straight face?

[/quote]

Have you seen the makeup of most all protests on campus or otherwise? How often do you see anti-affirmative action protests? Or protests against filibustering judicial appointments? Or someone running across a stage to throw a pie in the face of Michael Moore?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
How often do you see anti-affirmative action protests?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>How 'bout abortion clinic protests? Do those count?</p>

<p>As for anti-affirmative action protests, the "bake-sale" protests with posters offering cookies at different prices for students of different races strikes me as falling in the "confrontational" category, as well.</p>

<p>For the record, the last large scale "protest" at my daughter's "ultra left wing" school was a "sit-in" at the admissions office. To protest the decision to discontinue football. Oh, those wacky radicals.</p>

<p>This issue is just a big bogeyman. The Republicans play the matyr better than any other political group. So much so that they can't seem to let it go even when they control the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and most of the state governments.</p>

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<p>This is the young Smith College prof I mentioned earlier. He was denied tenure by his department committee 5-3, and after much student activism and other pressure, the Smith Grievance Committee examined the case and voted 5-0 that his academic freedom had been violated. Good for the Grievance Committee. However, the end of the story is that his department again denied him tenure 5-4, and it was only through the intervention of the president and her tenure committee that he became tenured. A couple of links follow, if you're interested.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Conservative Prof at Smith will be Reconsidered for Tenure
By Elaine Stoll--Smith College Sophian</p>

<p>Smith economics professor James D. Miller, denied tenure in spring 2003, won his appeal with Smith's Grievance Committee and will be reconsidered for tenure during the 2003-2004 academic year.</p>

<p>In a statement dated May 16, 2003, the five-member committee unanimously found that Miller's academic freedom had been violated in his tenure review and recommended that he be reconsidered for tenure. Smith President Carol T. Christ accepted that recommendation.</p>

<p>"The support I have received from students and many faculty members during this difficult time certainly made me feel much better about staying should I get tenure," Miller told The Sophian.</p>

<p>Smith is an active conservative, with a book and many popular essays; he holds a PhD in economics from Chicago and a law degree from Stanford. For his very impressive CV see <a href="http://sophia.smith.edu/%7Ejdmiller/resume.html%5B/url%5D%5B/quote%5D"&gt;http://sophia.smith.edu/~jdmiller/resume.html

[/quote]
</a>
<a href="http://www.valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid%3A99647%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid%3A99647&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.consumersvoice.org/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-040605B%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.consumersvoice.org/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-040605B&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Here is the 22 page plan.</p>

<p><a href="http://vpdiversity.uoregon.edu/diversity_plan_draft.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://vpdiversity.uoregon.edu/diversity_plan_draft.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>