More wokeademia

An anonymous commenter on my last post points to an article by Jeffrey Mervis in Science Magazine. The National Institutes of Health -- that's the NIH, an arm of the Federal Government, that distributes your and my tax dollars to support research -- will

launch a $241 million initiative called Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation (FIRST). The money, over 9 years, would go to help each of roughly a dozen universities and medical schools support a cluster of 10 or more newly hired young faculty members. 

That sounds nice. The catch:

Not all of the 120 new hires would need to belong to groups now underrepresented in academic medicine, which include women, black people, Hispanics, Native Americans, and those with disabilities, says Hannah Valantine, NIH’s chief diversity officer. In fact, she told the Council of Councils at its 24 January meeting, any such restriction would be illegal 

Well, there is a welcome acknowledgment

and also run counter to the program’s goal of attracting world-class talent. But Valantine says every person hired must have a track record of working to change a culture that too often makes scientists from underrepresented groups feel unwelcome on campus and isolated in the laboratory.

(My emphasis) Read that again slowly. "Every. person. hired. must. have. a. track. record"... The minorities too. The NIH is now forcing universities to add a political litmus test for hiring.

This metamorphosis, from quotas, to affirmative action, to diversity, to active political loyalty to the "diversity equity and inclusion" enterprise, is spreading faster than I thought.

At Emory University, cluster hiring has helped its college of arts and sciences triple the number of new faculty from underrepresented groups in the past 3 years, says Carla Freeman, the college’s senior associate dean of faculty. ....

With a cluster hire, Emory asks applicants to describe what they have done to foster diversity and uses their answers in deciding who deserves a closer look. Freeman says she is aware that such diversity statements “are controversial. … But they reveal a lot about the candidate.”  

My emphasis.  I bet they do. All of the people quoted here and in the last post are proud of how the diversity statements allowed them to engage in what Ms. Valentine above just acknowledged is illegal discrimination. Most of all, they seem very well suited to distinguish the true progressive warriors from fakers who just want to mumble pieties and get back to the lab to write some papers.  

"Are controversial" links to another science article. by Michael Price, reporting on the Abigail Thompson (UC Davis) affair.

Researchers rushed to author op-eds and joint public letters both supporting and opposing Thompson. The reactions reflect a tension between mathematicians who see efforts to promote diversity as an intrusion of politics into research, and those who see opening their field to historically marginalized communities as the surest way to advance research. As befits the field, each side claims numerical data support their view.

And thus instantly repeats the smears and calumnies directed at Professor Thompson and anyone else in the way. Her letter, like my posts, takes issue only with the statements, with required professions of political beliefs, and required participation in political activities. Nothing in her letter, like these posts, objects to diversity, "opening" and even affirmative action itself. This is not about "efforts to promote diversity." 

Mr. Price, when writing for Science, why don't you read Abigail's second paragraph:

Mathematics has made progress over the past decades towards becoming a more welcoming, inclusive discipline. We should continue to do all we can to reduce barriers to participation in this most beautiful of fields. I am encouraged by the many mathematicians who are working to achieve this laudable aim. There are reasonable means to further this goal: encouraging students from all backgrounds to enter the mathematics pipeline, trying to ensure that talented mathematicians don’t leave the profession, creating family-friendly policies, and supporting junior faculty at the beginning of their careers, for example. There are also mistakes to avoid. Mandating diversity statements for job candidates is one such mistake, reminiscent of events of seventy years ago

She is all for "efforts to promote diversity." Not for efforts to promote political conformity, and efforts to coerce faculty to support and participate in programs dreamed up by the diversity office staff.

Manfred the Mammoth, commenting  on the last post, suggested "One idea could be that the Federal Government cut off all federal funding to the UC system."  It looks like the Federal Government is using our money on the other side of this controversy.


from The Grumpy Economist https://ift.tt/38XaXu9