Diversity and inclusion Gone Wild

[ergative]

It seems to me like UAPHU missed a golden opportunity to say something like, "it's important for us to query what we mean by 'fit' when we short-list candidates. Do we mean, 'this person will fit in well because their research expands our provision with enough overlap for us to develop meaningful collaborations?' Do we mean, 'this person will fit in well because their background and interests will resonate with a set of our student body that has not yet been very attracted to our subject?' Or do we mean 'this person will fit in well because they look, talk, and think like us'. Because one of those interpretations of 'fit' is not at all consistent with valuing diversity."

Fixed that. If everyone looks different, but thinks and talks the same, that's the gold standard for "diversity".

I think that statement was fine as it was. Claiming that people are not a good fit because they don't look like us absolutely inconsistent with valuing diversity.

[mahagonny]

It seems to me like UAPHU missed a golden opportunity to say something like, "it's important for us to query what we mean by 'fit' when we short-list candidates. Do we mean, 'this person will fit in well because their research expands our provision with enough overlap for us to develop meaningful collaborations?' Do we mean, 'this person will fit in well because their background and interests will resonate with a set of our student body that has not yet been very attracted to our subject?' Or do we mean 'this person will fit in well because they look, talk, and think like us'. Because one of those interpretations of 'fit' is not at all consistent with valuing diversity."

Fixed that. If everyone looks different, but thinks and talks the same, that's the gold standard for "diversity".

I think that statement was fine as it was. Claiming that people are not a good fit because they don't look like us absolutely inconsistent with valuing diversity.

Agree with that, but I find in faculty discussions people who talk about valuing diversity the most do not really value diversity more than those who talk about it less. They just talk about it more because it's how they get into the club. They need to show that they're up to speed. Some of them are fervent and some are going along to get along. But it is a type of currency in the marketplace of self-promotion and getting a place at the table.
Interesting piece: https://spectator.us/nobody-woke/

The diversity mantra has winners and losers too. There was a good piece about it a week ago on realclearpolitics.com. Can't find it right now. It discussed recent attacks against Jews in the US. Perhaps someone here saw it.

Absolutely, but the people who claim to most "value" diversity tend to be very unimpressed with diversity of thought. The differences that are most valued are superficial; ideological differences are highly undesirable.

Or don't ever come to a conclusion. 'A liberal is a guy who is so broadminded he won't take his own side in an argument.' - Robert Frost (?)

[marshwiggle]

It seems to me like UAPHU missed a golden opportunity to say something like, "it's important for us to query what we mean by 'fit' when we short-list candidates. Do we mean, 'this person will fit in well because their research expands our provision with enough overlap for us to develop meaningful collaborations?' Do we mean, 'this person will fit in well because their background and interests will resonate with a set of our student body that has not yet been very attracted to our subject?' Or do we mean 'this person will fit in well because they look, talk, and think like us'. Because one of those interpretations of 'fit' is not at all consistent with valuing diversity."

Fixed that. If everyone looks different, but thinks and talks the same, that's the gold standard for "diversity".

I think that statement was fine as it was. Claiming that people are not a good fit because they don't look like us absolutely inconsistent with valuing diversity.

Absolutely, but the people who claim to most "value" diversity tend to be very unimpressed with diversity of thought. The differences that are most valued are superficial; ideological differences are highly undesirable.

[Cheerful]

He's been leaning so heavily on adding more "diversity hires" that its becoming professionally uncomfortable for almost everyone.

Our HR office is being instructed to not approve faculty interviewing unless a minimum quota of minority ethnicities are inserted into finalist queues. So we're just stuffing extra warm bodies of half-qualified or poorly qualified people in, just to keep the search process going.

One of the most uncomfortable experiences I've had is dinner with a job candidate participating in the usual 1.5 day interview whom I knew had almost no chance of being offered the job because of the other competing candidates we interviewed.  In this case, the candidate was brought in to check a box for HR.  I felt bad for the candidate and about the whole process.

[Ruralguy]

I'm not sure why it would have to be uncomfortable (unless they were poor candidates). They can prove themselves (or not) just like anybody else and you can treat them in exactly the same manner as anybody else. If they just don't cut it, then they don't. I suppose if its obvious in the first 5 minutes (as it can also be with anybody else) that they can't hack it, then just go through the motions, and see where it goes.

[Cheerful]

I'm not sure why it would have to be uncomfortable (unless they were poor candidates). They can prove themselves (or not) just like anybody else and you can treat them in exactly the same manner as anybody else. If they just don't cut it, then they don't. I suppose if its obvious in the first 5 minutes (as it can also be with anybody else) that they can't hack it, then just go through the motions, and see where it goes.

Based on the application, the candidate did not merit an interview.  The person was brought in to check a box for HR so that we could proceed with our job search and make a hire.  I felt bad for the candidate because the interview was a charade to please HR.

Perhaps it's similar to bringing in 1-3 external candidates for procedural reasons when everyone in the hiring unit knows the internal candidate will be hired.

[marshwiggle]

I'm not sure why it would have to be uncomfortable (unless they were poor candidates). They can prove themselves (or not) just like anybody else and you can treat them in exactly the same manner as anybody else. If they just don't cut it, then they don't. I suppose if its obvious in the first 5 minutes (as it can also be with anybody else) that they can't hack it, then just go through the motions, and see where it goes.

My guess is that "box checking" means that often candidates who would otherwise be seen as poor are included in order to check boxes. Politically that's superior to pointing out that the more specialized a job is, the fewer people (regardless of "diversity") who are going to be qualified.

[Caracal]

At Big Urban College, our leader has gotten it into his head that the local race demographic of our region should be closely matched by the race demographic of our faculty.

Our local area demographic is something like >50% of various minorities. If you have any knowledge of what the U.S. statistics breakdown of PhD's by ethnicity is, you can see how problematic it is for us to reach even a fraction of the way towards the president's goal.

He's been leaning so heavily on adding more "diversity hires" that its becoming professionally uncomfortable for almost everyone.

Our HR office is being instructed to not approve faculty interviewing unless a minimum quota of minority ethnicities are inserted into finalist queues. So we're just stuffing extra warm bodies of half-qualified or poorly qualified people in, just to keep the search process going.

There is lots of muttering now on campus about reverse-discrimination. At some point I feel that we are going to reach a tipping point and someone is going to file a lawsuit.

First of all I don't really have a lot of time for white people talking about reverse discrimination. The suggestion that in general white people have it rough in academia is absurd.

Secondly, it might be worth thinking about what it is that makes these people "poorly qualified or half qualified." In some cases, you might be actually talking about whether someone is lacking a core qualification for the job. If someone doesn't have the required degree, or they are in an only vaguely related subspecialty, that might be someone who really isn't going to benefit from an interview. However, in my highly competitive field, the sheer number of applications that come in for every position leads to a lot of credential creep. To be a "qualified" candidate, people are expected to emerge out of grad school with a published article in a major journal and have a whole host of conference papers under their belts even though this doesn't necessarily indicate they will be a good fit for the position or the school.

Years ago the NFL instituted what came to be known as "the Rooney Rule." The rule was just that if a team was hiring for a position they had to interview a minority candidate. That was it. They didn't have to hire them, just find someone to give an interview to. I'm sure there was plenty of quiet grumbling of the sort you see here. Just this one rule, however, resulted in far more minority hires at all levels over a period of time. What this really showed was that the ideas that teams had about what made a candidate "qualified" were far too narrow and weren't really about hiring the best person. Once teams were forced to bring in some person who didn't have the "right" credentials, they sometimes interviewed that guy and ended up realizing the person had strengths that didn't come across on paper, or they had made racially based assumptions about people that quickly crumbled once they were actually talking to some guy in a conference room about his ideas for how to do things better.

[Wahoo Redux]

First of all I don't really have a lot of time for white people talking about reverse discrimination. The suggestion that in general white people have it rough in academia is absurd.

Well, this may start a can-of-worms, flame-war kind of thing...

But I'm not sure that having it "rough in academia" is the measure of "reserve discrimination" (which is a problematic and maybe even incorrectly-coined term, I will admit).  No sane person thinks that white people have it rough in academia. 

The idea as I have heard it expressed or enacted has more to do with the attempt to deny white people something (job, award, etc.) because someone really wants to prove that they "value diversity."

I was a grad student rep on a job search a number of years ago.  The chair frankly said that we needed to "increase diversity."  We chose badly from a huge pool of over-qualified candidates, however, and our one minority candidate (out of three) was a very pleasant basket-case and wasn't actually all that well qualified to begin with.  There were many more better published, more experienced candidates of a less desirable racial makeup in the mix.  We at least managed to hire a very well qualified white woman. 

I have personally seen it in one job interview cycle which I had nothing to do with but a friend did.  Our friend actually said over dinner, "I don't think a straight white guy should get this job" and shrugged, alluding to the many well-qualified Caucasian candidates in the pool.  They hired a reasonably but not outstandingly well-qualified minority professor who everyone liked, who did a good job, and then who left for a better job after one year.

And in one tenure review case a white faculty from the year before was denied tenure with almost the same qualifications as a minority candidate who was granted tenure on a split vote the next year---and no, there was not a big difference in quality of teaching or service between the two.  It didn't help that the white tenure case had the personality of old wet toast, but still....  While nothing was ever explicitly stated about race, we (my wife and I) did note the number of faculty who leaped to the defense of the minority candidate and took umbrage at the tenured faculty who pointed out that hu had not met minimum requirements (which were not stringent) or even bothered to proofread hu's tenure documents. The minority candidate left for a better job within a year and posted scathing reviews of the department on Facebook. If the racial profiles of these two candidates were reversed I bet dollars to buttons we would have had a lawsuit. 

There is actually another very problematic issue regarding race and hiring at the this same school, but the details would be too particular to one school and person for me to post----so I won't.  But it is there, in plain sight for anyone to see, and very hard to deny based on objective observation.

Then there are the many backroom comments made about white job candidates, professors, writers, grad students, or just anyone which would cause outrage if the racial or gender makeup was reversed.

That said, we know that white men have ruled the roost for many years and that the experiences, real and/or perceived, of minorities can be very fraught.  And sure, we have a lot of dyed-in-the-wool wolfs-in-sheep's clothing among the ranks.

Let's just not minimize other people's perceptions or misstate what they experience either.

[marshwiggle]

First of all I don't really have a lot of time for white people talking about reverse discrimination. The suggestion that in general white people have it rough in academia is absurd.

Well, this may start a can-of-worms, flame-war kind of thing...

But I'm not sure that having it "rough in academia" is the measure of "reserve discrimination" (which is a problematic and maybe even incorrectly-coined term, I will admit).  No sane person thinks that white people have it rough in academia. 

The idea as I have heard it expressed or enacted has more to do with the attempt to deny white people something (job, award, etc.) because someone really wants to prove that they "value diversity."

Here's an interthreadual link that might help to illustrate the problem:

Small liberal arts colleges partner with high schools in their region to seek out and engage those high-potential students who possess "scrappy genius," mentoring them over the course of their high school careers to take charge of their learning and to build critical skills for college readiness.

It's a seductive idea that there are all kinds of undervalued geniuses out there that we just need to find, but there's no guarantee that that will be the case in any specific recruitment effort.

Contrary to what Disney would have you believe, wishing does NOT necessarily make it so.

[mahagonny]

First of all I don't really have a lot of time for white people talking about reverse discrimination. The suggestion that in general white people have it rough in academia is absurd.

Well, this may start a can-of-worms, flame-war kind of thing...

But I'm not sure that having it "rough in academia" is the measure of "reserve discrimination" (which is a problematic and maybe even incorrectly-coined term, I will admit).  No sane person thinks that white people have it rough in academia. 

if you taught where I do in big urban school with lots of non-white faculty, far left liberal arts faculty and a diversity/inclusion department on steroids, you would know that there is a lot of anger being directed at us white folks.

[Aster]

I'm not sure why it would have to be uncomfortable (unless they were poor candidates). They can prove themselves (or not) just like anybody else and you can treat them in exactly the same manner as anybody else. If they just don't cut it, then they don't. I suppose if its obvious in the first 5 minutes (as it can also be with anybody else) that they can't hack it, then just go through the motions, and see where it goes.

Yes. It is exactly as others have stated.

#1. The discomfort would be being told by your supervisor for you to engage in discrimination practices in an off-the-books, wink-wink, nothing-written down way.

#2. The discomfort would be going through sham interviews for applicants who were only brought in because you were told they had to be included because they fulfilled the diversity quota.


Heck, we were forced to bring in an applicant last year for final interviews for a tenure track sciences position, whose terminal degree was a Master's in Education. That applicant delivered one of the worst teaching demonstrations most of us had seen in years.

Every other applicant that we brought in for interviews had a PhD in-field, 2-3x the teaching experience in-field, and an extensive research and/or service record in-field. The MEd applicant had no relevant research or service experience. He could not even answer basic freshman-level vocabulary questions. It was very uncomfortable for both the committee and the interviewing applicant to proceed through the Q&A section.

[ergative]

I have personally seen it in one job interview cycle which I had nothing to do with but a friend did.  Our friend actually said over dinner, "I don't think a straight white guy should get this job" and shrugged, alluding to the many well-qualified Caucasian candidates in the pool.  They hired a reasonably but not outstandingly well-qualified minority professor who everyone liked, who did a good job, and then who left for a better job after one year.

I don't see the problem here. Presumably if you'd hired someone more qualified they also might have left, yes? And as it is, you hired someone else, who was also qualified, and who did a good job for the time they were in post.

And in one tenure review case a white faculty from the year before was denied tenure with almost the same qualifications as a minority candidate who was granted tenure on a split vote the next year---and no, there was not a big difference in quality of teaching or service between the two.  It didn't help that the white tenure case had the personality of old wet toast, but still....

But still . . . what? There were two tenure candidates with similar qualifications. The one who had the personality of old wet toast didn't make it, and the one who had (I infer) a better personality barely squeaked by.

There is actually another very problematic issue regarding race and hiring at the this same school, but the details would be too particular to one school and person for me to post----so I won't.  But it is there, in plain sight for anyone to see, and very hard to deny based on objective observation.

Then there are the many backroom comments made about white job candidates, professors, writers, grad students, or just anyone which would cause outrage if the racial or gender makeup was reversed.

That said, we know that white men have ruled the roost for many years and that the experiences, real and/or perceived, of minorities can be very fraught.  And sure, we have a lot of dyed-in-the-wool wolfs-in-sheep's clothing among the ranks.

Let's just not minimize other people's perceptions or misstate what they experience either.

I don't deny that this happens. But the fact remains that one group is suffers a lot more than another from these sorts of comments and hiring decisions directed against them, and the group that suffers more is also the group that is has had generations of opportunities abridged and lost. So when I decide how to prioritize my outrage---and there is enough cause for outrage that I must prioritize it---I do not put the straight white guys first. So I guess it must be a good thing that there are evidently other people who are willing to step in and fill that gap.

[Caracal]

I have personally seen it in one job interview cycle which I had nothing to do with but a friend did.  Our friend actually said over dinner, "I don't think a straight white guy should get this job" and shrugged, alluding to the many well-qualified Caucasian candidates in the pool.  They hired a reasonably but not outstandingly well-qualified minority professor who everyone liked, who did a good job, and then who left for a better job after one year.

I don't see the problem here. Presumably if you'd hired someone more qualified they also might have left, yes? And as it is, you hired someone else, who was also qualified, and who did a good job for the time they were in post.

And in one tenure review case a white faculty from the year before was denied tenure with almost the same qualifications as a minority candidate who was granted tenure on a split vote the next year---and no, there was not a big difference in quality of teaching or service between the two.  It didn't help that the white tenure case had the personality of old wet toast, but still....

But still . . . what? There were two tenure candidates with similar qualifications. The one who had the personality of old wet toast didn't make it, and the one who had (I infer) a better personality barely squeaked by.

Exactly. I'm struck by the belief that academia is at heart a meritocracy, except when a non white person gets a job, or an interview. Then suddenly, people feel like there has been some sort of violation of fairness. I can think of plenty of cases where white male candidates who I thought were just ok got jobs that hundreds of people applied for. I can think of a few people, white and not white, who I think are terrible scholars, who have gotten jobs and tenure. Academia is not a meritocracy, or fair, and other people's opinions about these things are sometimes different from my own. If you're reserving most of your outrage for cases where you believe that some minority candidate who you think was marginally worse than a white candidate, it might be worth thinking about some of the assumptions behind those feelings.

[marshwiggle]

I don't deny that this happens. But the fact remains that one group suffers a lot more than another from these sorts of comments and hiring decisions directed against them, and the group that suffers more is also the group that  has had generations of opportunities abridged and lost. So when I decide how to prioritize my outrage---and there is enough cause for outrage that I must prioritize it---I do not put the straight white guys first. So I guess it must be a good thing that there are evidently other people who are willing to step in and fill that gap.

Typically, it is individuals who suffer. If some white guy doesn't get hired for a job, that doesn't affect me.  On the other hand, if some white guy wins the lottery, that doesn't count as any sort of "win" for me. Unless we're some sort of Borg collective, it makes very little sense to refer to decisions about individuals as having some great significance for any group to which they may belong.