Diversity and inclusion Gone Wild

[tuxthepenguin]

But again, I'd argue that "best" is a nebulous term to define, and that at least where I've been employed, demographics *do* matter to our student retention, and students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school. Diversity also increases the range of opinions and experiences people bring to the school, which is a benefit. And since I've yet to see these cases people bring up where there aren't a plethora of "qualified" candidates for the job... Between otherwise qualified candidates, picking one that brings perspectives and experiences to the school that are missing can certainly make them a better fit.

There are professors that will get upset if you make this argument. It's offensive to them to suggest that you should take diversity into account for any reason other than to reduce the power of white men. Ask me how I know. They've done more to hurt the cause of diversity in universities than anyone else.

[Caracal]

Where are you people working that you have so many unqualified candidates applying?

I personally have never seen anyone "unqualified" hop to the short list of anything in my limited experience.  But in my limited experience I have seen candidates who meet basically minimal requirements but of a certain race hopped over candidates who have excellent credentials.  I suspect everyone on these boards has been in the vicinity of this kind of scenario.  That's the issue: race or gender becomes a credential.

Anyone read Richard Rodriquez, Hunger of Memory?  This is a memoir by a faculty from an under-represented group.  He talks about the experience of being a Latino faculty----and his perceptions are not what you might expect.  This was assigned by a minority faculty member to a graduate seminar I attended.  Part this scenario is that sometimes minority success-stories wonder if they really are successful because of their talents and merits...or are they successful because of their birth cultural or racial heritage.  This was the context that we were assigned the text.

Between otherwise qualified candidates, picking one that brings perspectives and experiences to the school that are missing can certainly make them a better fit.

Sure.  This is a perfectly valid argument.  It would be most germane in the liberal arts which teach courses on, say, African American history or Hispanic cultural studies, I suppose.  But we must also simply call it what it is: hiring based on race, gender, etc. and a form of reverse discrimination.

I don't agree at all. First of all, it isn't only relevant if you teach courses on African American History. Ideas of race and gender are crucial in understanding history and lots of other disciplines. I'd go further than that though, and argue that just having people who don't all come from the same backgrounds is going to improve scholarship. If you have a whole bunch of people who all went to the same kind of high schools and same kind colleges they are going to have a lot of the same sort of ideas. That is probably just as true in Physics as it is in English.

I also don't really think this is "reverse discrimination." That is part of this ridiculous idea of color blindness where people try to ignore history and context. Discrimination came and comes out of policies that were specifically designed to exclude certain people and maintain white supremacy, or Christian supremacy. To the extent that it happens, I think deliberately not considering people based on race is wrong and counterproductive. However, considering someone's race or religion if that group is underrepresented, within the broader context of other qualifications isn't remotely the same thing as saying "we think a white candidate would do a better job.

[Wahoo Redux]

Fair enough.  I buy what you are saying, at least to an extent.  I do have problems with "diversity hiring" based on a few incidents I have personally seen, however, so we may just have to agree to disagree realizing that we may not be able to define a term and have other people buy into its context.

[Caracal]

Fair enough.  I buy what you are saying, at least to an extent.  I do have problems with "diversity hiring" based on a few incidents I have personally seen

I'm sure there are cases where committees make bad hiring decisions because they get too focused on diversity at the final stage. The point is to consider the potential value of a more diverse perspective in the decision, not to hire a bad candidate just because they are from an underrepresented group. However, I've seen plenty of hiring decisions that struck me as strange motivated by a fixation on other things as well. I often see people get fixated on a particular subspecialty for bad reasons. If you have 8 people in your department, and the only person who is a Modern Europeanist leaves, why would you decide that their replacement has to study post war Austria? I don't think, however, that anyone would argue that it is inherently wrong to consider area of study in the hiring process.

[Wahoo Redux]

Fair enough.  I buy what you are saying, at least to an extent.  I do have problems with "diversity hiring" based on a few incidents I have personally seen

I'm sure there are cases where committees make bad hiring decisions because they get too focused on diversity at the final stage. The point is to consider the potential value of a more diverse perspective in the decision, not to hire a bad candidate just because they are from an underrepresented group. However, I've seen plenty of hiring decisions that struck me as strange motivated by a fixation on other things as well. I often see people get fixated on a particular subspecialty for bad reasons. If you have 8 people in your department, and the only person who is a Modern Europeanist leaves, why would you decide that their replacement has to study post war Austria? I don't think, however, that anyone would argue that it is inherently wrong to consider area of study in the hiring process.

Not sure I follow.  We DO consider area of study in the hiring process because we need to hire experts in areas of study.  That's who and what college instructors are, area specialists.

If you need someone to teach about Modern Europe you need a Modern Europeanist.   You would need to hire someone who has expertise in Modern European history.  Hu's primary expertise might be Austria, but presumably hu has enough depth of knowledge to teach other subjects as well.

How does that relate to hiring a Modern Europeanist based on, among other factors, race, sexuality, etc.?

[mahagonny]

But again, I'd argue that "best" is a nebulous term to define, and that at least where I've been employed, demographics *do* matter to our student retention, and students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school. Diversity also increases the range of opinions and experiences people bring to the school, which is a benefit. And since I've yet to see these cases people bring up where there aren't a plethora of "qualified" candidates for the job... Between otherwise qualified candidates, picking one that brings perspectives and experiences to the school that are missing can certainly make them a better fit.

Students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school because they are being taught by or in the company of professors who look like them and talk like them is not a diversity experience though. It's a bonding with folks from the neighborhood. A diversity experience would be like I'm a white guy and I learn to speak French from an Ethiopian woman. When you talk about students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school aren't you really mostly talking about schools competing with each other for enrollment, more than educational theories? If students learn less from people of different backgrounds than their own, the same should be true of professors who are part of a diverse department.

[eigen]

But again, I'd argue that "best" is a nebulous term to define, and that at least where I've been employed, demographics *do* matter to our student retention, and students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school. Diversity also increases the range of opinions and experiences people bring to the school, which is a benefit. And since I've yet to see these cases people bring up where there aren't a plethora of "qualified" candidates for the job... Between otherwise qualified candidates, picking one that brings perspectives and experiences to the school that are missing can certainly make them a better fit.

Students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school because they are being taught by or in the company of professors who look like them and talk like them is not a diversity experience though. It's a bonding with folks from the neighborhood. A diversity experience would be like I'm a white guy and I learn to speak French from an Ethiopian woman. When you talk about students feeling welcome and comfortable at the school aren't you really mostly talking about schools competing with each other for enrollment, more than educational theories? If students learn less from people of different backgrounds than their own, the same should be true of professors who are part of a diverse department.

There are two sides of this, both of which I'd argue are important:

Students seeing people they identify with is a part of inclusion, which helps students feel like it's possible for them to continue in a particular area. If a student never sees faculty they can identify with as role models, they are less likely to feel like they belong as part of a field, which is bad.

Students who never encounter faculty with a different set of experiences and background than they have aren't as exposed to other ideas, which isn't good. Similarly, diversity among colleagues helps out. This is true of a range of background diversity. For instance, if you have only faculty who come from high SES families, they are less likely to be able to give light to the struggles that first gen or low SES students encounter, to other students or peers.

[Caracal]

Fair enough.  I buy what you are saying, at least to an extent.  I do have problems with "diversity hiring" based on a few incidents I have personally seen

I'm sure there are cases where committees make bad hiring decisions because they get too focused on diversity at the final stage. The point is to consider the potential value of a more diverse perspective in the decision, not to hire a bad candidate just because they are from an underrepresented group. However, I've seen plenty of hiring decisions that struck me as strange motivated by a fixation on other things as well. I often see people get fixated on a particular subspecialty for bad reasons. If you have 8 people in your department, and the only person who is a Modern Europeanist leaves, why would you decide that their replacement has to study post war Austria? I don't think, however, that anyone would argue that it is inherently wrong to consider area of study in the hiring process.

Not sure I follow.  We DO consider area of study in the hiring process because we need to hire experts in areas of study.  That's who and what college instructors are, area specialists.

If you need someone to teach about Modern Europe you need a Modern Europeanist.   You would need to hire someone who has expertise in Modern European history.  Hu's primary expertise might be Austria, but presumably hu has enough depth of knowledge to teach other subjects as well.

How does that relate to hiring a Modern Europeanist based on, among other factors, race, sexuality, etc.?

Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. What I meant was that I have seen cases where the need is for someone to teach Modern Europe at a small liberal arts school, but the department decides that they need to hire someone from a very particular subspecialty. Obviously, there could be all kinds of good reasons for wanting to hire someone who studies post war Austria. For example, if the school had a grad program and was trying to build a concentration in modern Central European history, or if for some particular reasons they had a lot of students interested in taking courses on post war Austria, or even if a donor was funding an endowed professorship, it would absolutely make sense to only consider the post war Austrian person.

However, I can think of quite a few cases where there wasn't actually a compelling reason to limit the search and the school might have been able to hire a better candidate for the position, if they hadn't done so. It would have been one thing to prefer some subspecialty, but it became the dominant factor in the search and led to a weird decision.

The point I was trying, and failing to make, was that it is obviously possible for a committee to screw up a search if they are entirely focused on diversity to the exclusion of other important factors, in the same way that you can screw up a search by getting fixated on some other particular thing. My suspicion is that this happens more often when schools have bad records of diversity, don't think much about getting a diverse applicant pool when they write the original job ad, and then panic at the end and hire someone with all kinds of red flags.

[Aster]

I would settle for just having a robust selection of candidates that are moderately qualified to even hold the rank of professor within the academic discipline.

But if some institutions are so inundated with high-quality applicants, then one might argue that there is some merit in making quaternary-level selections from non-academic criteria (e.g. skin colour, race, gender, attractiveness, etc.).

[marshwiggle]

I would settle for just having a robust selection of candidates that are moderately qualified to even hold the rank of professor within the academic discipline.

But if some institutions are so inundated with high-quality applicants, then one might argue that there is some merit in making quaternary-level selections from non-academic criteria (e.g. skin colour, race, gender, attractiveness, etc.).

This is really important.

I hire undergraduate lab TAs. Because of their schedules, form some sections I have a choice of several applicants. For other sections, I sometimes have only one; on occasion I have none and I have to actively try and track someone down. That difference has a huge effect on who I hire. If I have no choice, I'll take the only warm body I can get. If I have a lot of well-qualified candidates, then I can give more thought to who I might like to hire, or who I might like to put in front of students.  But the size of the pool is a real issue and it varies enough that both scenarios happen in the same term.

[Aster]

I would settle for just having a robust selection of candidates that are moderately qualified to even hold the rank of professor within the academic discipline.

But if some institutions are so inundated with high-quality applicants, then one might argue that there is some merit in making quaternary-level selections from non-academic criteria (e.g. skin colour, race, gender, attractiveness, etc.).

This is really important.

I hire undergraduate lab TAs. Because of their schedules, form some sections I have a choice of several applicants. For other sections, I sometimes have only one; on occasion I have none and I have to actively try and track someone down. That difference has a huge effect on who I hire. If I have no choice, I'll take the only warm body I can get. If I have a lot of well-qualified candidates, then I can give more thought to who I might like to hire, or who I might like to put in front of students.  But the size of the pool is a real issue and it varies enough that both scenarios happen in the same term.

Yes. For short-term, limited duty, part-time, contingent hires, selection criteria based on academic qualifications may be far less rigorous. Or the academic qualifications in such circumstances may be quaternary considerations. Although I've never heard of TA's being hired based on their ethnicity or gender. It would be interesting to see where that might be happening.

[britprof]

I can't speak to how things are in the UK now, since I last held a position there eight years ago. I had to write a diversity and inclusion statement on behalf of the academic department that I was leading. I appreciated that opportunity to make connections between societal developments, education, and my own curriculum areas.

When I returned to the US in 2012 and started applying for jobs I do not recall that the emphasis on diversity and inclusion was as strong as it is now. I have noticed in applying for jobs in 2020 there is often a requirement for a statement on diversity and inclusion, which is almost as routine as the statement of teaching philosophy. This extends to one-year visiting appointments, and even adjunct positions.

I find it hard to believe that for NTT positions search committee members are reading the cover letter, CV, statement of teaching philosophy, teaching evaluations, sample syllabi, and the diversity and inclusion statement produced by each applicant.

[Caracal]

When I returned to the US in 2012 and started applying for jobs I do not recall that the emphasis on diversity and inclusion was as strong as it is now. I have noticed in applying for jobs in 2020 there is often a requirement for a statement on diversity and inclusion, which is almost as routine as the statement of teaching philosophy. This extends to one-year visiting appointments, and even adjunct positions.

When I was applying for jobs a few years ago, I really found the diversity statements to be pointless. It seemed like it was just asking me to write some pablum and it felt embarrassing to comply. Now that I actually have some teaching experience, I think I could write something I'd be actually willing to stand behind since I actually have taught a diverse student body and had to think about what that should mean for my approach. I feel similarly about teaching statements, actually.

[pgher]

When I returned to the US in 2012 and started applying for jobs I do not recall that the emphasis on diversity and inclusion was as strong as it is now. I have noticed in applying for jobs in 2020 there is often a requirement for a statement on diversity and inclusion, which is almost as routine as the statement of teaching philosophy. This extends to one-year visiting appointments, and even adjunct positions.

When I was applying for jobs a few years ago, I really found the diversity statements to be pointless. It seemed like it was just asking me to write some pablum and it felt embarrassing to comply. Now that I actually have some teaching experience, I think I could write something I'd be actually willing to stand behind since I actually have taught a diverse student body and had to think about what that should mean for my approach. I feel similarly about teaching statements, actually.

As a search committee member evaluating them, I realized that "diversity" as we mean it is a highly American concept. When we had foreign applicants, or even foreign students of US universities, their concept of "diversity" was quite different from ours.

[mahagonny]

When I returned to the US in 2012 and started applying for jobs I do not recall that the emphasis on diversity and inclusion was as strong as it is now. I have noticed in applying for jobs in 2020 there is often a requirement for a statement on diversity and inclusion, which is almost as routine as the statement of teaching philosophy. This extends to one-year visiting appointments, and even adjunct positions.

When I was applying for jobs a few years ago, I really found the diversity statements to be pointless. It seemed like it was just asking me to write some pablum and it felt embarrassing to comply. Now that I actually have some teaching experience, I think I could write something I'd be actually willing to stand behind since I actually have taught a diverse student body and had to think about what that should mean for my approach. I feel similarly about teaching statements, actually.

Yes, I see that in an application for a job I am interested in.

"Qualifications:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. An interest in working in a diverse workplace with a multicultural student body."

I guess I'm the weirdo, but I find this does not put the presumption in favor of the professional educator, nor even in favor of the human race. It's like starting out with a vote of no confidence. It will be easy enough to think of a story where teaching a person from a different part of the world was particularly gratifying with enough detail to be interesting. But I'm tempted to say "OK. If you can be a little flexible here; I'm only interested in sharing my knowledge with white protestant males. I feel that one of my strengths as an educator is being stingy with information." Or maybe 'Oh sure...I'm not like most people you'll be interviewing. I think everyone who gets themselves enrolled should get the same professional service.' Sounds appealing doesn't it.

What's really going on: they've got a well paid diversity staff, and these folks have to find new things to do to show how important and busy they are...?