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Identity politics has been an issue on campus for as long as I\u2019ve been in higher ed. It used to be primarily in hiring, where we were \u201cmotivated\u201d to hire people with certain genitals or skin color, on the basis that there \u201cweren\u2019t enough\u201d of such in associated positions.<\/p>\n
I confess for some time I at least sipped the Cool-Aid. At first, when I was on the hiring committee, I went along with ruling out certain types of genitals or skin color, or more accurately restricting the hiring options to certain genitals or skin color. I was young and stupid, far too concerned with academics to sit and think through the consequences of going along with administrative directives in this regard.<\/p>\n
After around 20 years in higher ed, and starting to see that I had just reinforced the glass ceiling above my head\u2026I began to ask questions. Admin considered them impertinent and I was punished for asking things like \u201chow do we know that a female will definitely be the best choice for this job?\u201d and \u201cby what metric is a certain minority under-represented?\u201d and \u201cwhat evidence do we have that diversity in the deans will make a better school?\u201d among other questions.<\/p>\n
I doubt I was the only one expressing such concerns, but my worries were all brushed aside in the name of identity politics. Higher ed has been doing this for decades now, and so I\u2019m not as surprised as most when seeing what is only the natural consequence of making higher education more about identity politics than education.<\/p>\n
Cal Poly University in California is obsessed with race, and a recent report from them highlights their dementedness<\/a>:<\/p>\n In 2011, the campus was 63 percent Caucasian; in fall of 2017, it was less than 55 percent. Applications from underrepresented minority students doubled between 2008 and 2018, while overall applications during that time increased by just half that much. Progress is being made \u2014 and the university is more diverse now than at any time in its 117-year history \u2014 but there is still much work to do.<\/em><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter that there\u2019s no evidence that education and research will be improved by more \u201cdiversity,\u201d they only want more. Despite their \u201cprogress\u201d in that regard, they still only want more. There is no end here, at least no good end for non-Diverse people.<\/p>\n There are over 100 historically black colleges in the United States today<\/a>. These schools obviously don\u2019t match the demographics of the United States and\u2026so? They also don\u2019t have any \u201cinitiatives\u201d to add white students to their campus. Again, I don\u2019t care, they can do whatever they want.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the hypocrisy I care about, and these black colleges are rightfully never asked to change. I see only hypocrisy in Cal Poly\u2019s stated goals:<\/p>\n In it, administration details a multi-year effort with dozens of initiatives, including ones to further lower the percentage of white students on campus and increase the number of faculty of color.<\/em><\/p>\n Consider how blatantly racist the above \u201ceffort\u201d is. The \u201cincrease the number of faculty of color\u201d outrage has been going on with a wink and a nod for years, it\u2019s only recently that this level of racism has been so acceptable that they can now put it in writing.<\/p>\n \u201cLower the percentage of white students\u201d is a bit of a problem: California college student populations were soaring in prior decades, so many schools have been at capacity. Granted, that may not be true today (I can\u2019t find recent stats), but the idea that some kid will be denied the chance to go to college because his skin is white sickens me, sickens me just as much as if he were denied because his skin is black.<\/p>\n Shouldn\u2019t scholarship, or at least demonstrated potential, be part of admissions requirements?<\/p>\n For students, the school plans on recruiting applicants more heavily based on race. For instance, the school has recently implemented several new scholarships \u201caimed at recruiting more African-American and other underrepresented minorities.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n How, exactly, is the above not racist?<\/p>\n It\u2019s also working to recruit low-income and first-generation students by partnering with high schools that enroll a high percentage of these students, according to the report.<\/em><\/p>\n By \u201cfirst-generation students,\u201d they\u2019re referring to students from families who have never sent a child to college. I always find these programs sinister, since many schools do this for the same reason crocodiles prey on the young herd animals coming to a river for the very first time: they make easy victims.<\/p>\n But back to the identity politics aspect of this:<\/p>\n And the college announced its intention of forcibly<\/strong> increasing diversity in \u201ctraditionally male-dominated majors\u201d such as STEM and Architecture and Environmental Design, according to the document.<\/em><\/p>\n —emphasis<\/strong> added.<\/em><\/p>\n Is anyone else creeped out by the idea of forcibly increasing diversity? How good could this idea be if you have to force people to do it? At least this is more sexist than racist\u2026or is that not an improvement? Why isn\u2019t anyone on campus standing up to this idea, an idea they know is so atrocious they\u2019re just going to force it?<\/p>\n Some of these initiatives are well known \u2014 such as the university creating an Office of University Diversity and Inclusion (OUDI) and hiring its first-ever vice president and chief officer for diversity and inclusion \u2014 and others less known, including the recruitment of senior-level administrators in the colleges and divisions to lead diversity and inclusion efforts.<\/em><\/p>\n Oh goody, another huge fiefdom to piss away all that student loan money, extracted from kids who don\u2019t know how they\u2019re being screwed because they\u2019re coming from first generation families, with no parents to warn them they\u2019re getting a fake education.<\/p>\n Another highlight from another site<\/a>:<\/p>\n This fall campus leaders will \u201crequire a diversity statement from candidates for all faculty and staff searches,\u201d the report states. It adds that search committees will now be made up of diverse membership and Academic Affairs has \u201cset [an] expectation that search committees will be based on best practices regarding diversity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n And here comes the chokehold: whites won\u2019t be on the hiring committees if at all possible. All hiring past this point will be identity based, and they\u2019ll literally use the racist and sexist hiring policies which got them on campus as \u201cbest practices\u201d to keep using racism and sexism in their hiring policies.<\/p>\n There are pages and pages of initiatives<\/a> planned in this report, but one more highlight:<\/p>\n Addition of diversity-related course requirements in many of the majors in CLA<\/em><\/p>\n An education used to be about academic subjects, like mathematics, science, and history. More and more, these requirements are being removed, and instead students are being required to take diversity courses, i.e., indoctrination courses. Again, where is the evidence that removing academics and replacing it with indoctrination will help education and research?<\/p>\n A decade from now, when we have many thousands of graduates from this college with worthless degrees, deep debt, and no way to pay any of it off, it would be nice if the people who suckered those graduates into coming to this trap of a college were forced to pay off those loans, but I know that\u2019s just crazy talk.<\/p>\n But considering how much crazy talk is in this report, I hardly feel out of place saying it.<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"