EducatioNation has a lengthy, aggrieved discussion of recent Oregon madness; the University of Oregon was considering a "five-year diversity plan" for faculty, which would have included an assessment in "cultural competency" in tenure judgments. Given that the diversification plan specifically mentioned race and gender, my guess is that professors who specialized in dead white male culture - or those who wanted to ignore culture altogether in the pursuit of teaching pure knowledge - would find themselves at a disadvantage.
Read it all. The post begins with an ominous poem by Yeats (you can probably guess which one) and ends with a quote from the The Gulag Archipelago. No one can accuse the EducatioNation folks of snoozing during literature classes.
The draft of the plan can be found here. Inside Higher Ed notes that some professors were listed on the draft without their permission, and the responding open letter to the U of O president is here.
Some of the stated assumptions underlying the diversity plan are particularly galling (assumptions are in bold, my responses in regular font):
• Racism and other forms of discrimination continue to exist and must be
challenged at the institutional and individual level. If it must be challenged at the institutional level, that suggests that they're claiming it still exists at the institutional level, a hard thing to believe after years of AA. What's more, it's a little scary that the university considers it an institutional charge to eradicate all individual racism.
• Inclusiveness is essential. Individuals can learn to appreciate and value
differences. Personal commitment and resources are necessary to create
and sustain an environment that fosters a culture of diversity. Of course individuals can learn to value differences; I just doubt that focusing constantly on differences such as race and gender are the best way to support this.
• Developing the cultural competence of individuals is essential to evolving
the kind of community described in our vision statement and to
improving quality of our educational experiences thereby reducing
disparities for all. What kind of disparities are we talking about here? That institutional racism mentioned above? Or differences in GPA or career paths? It's hard to believe that focusing on "cultural competence" of professors will help close the achievement gap.
• Cultural sensitivity and knowledge are necessary but not sufficient for
individuals to behave in a culturally competent way. What gets
rewarded gets done. Funny, when we try to use that as a defense for NCLB, or for teacher merit pay, or any other system that recognizes good work over bad work, we hear that it's not fair to use the carrot-on-a-stick method to improve education.
• Intellectual ability is not a function of race, ethnicity, or class. Academic
achievement is influenced by access to resources and opportunities and
disparities are related to race, ethnicity, and class. If race/ethnicity/class are not related to intellectual ability, why should we focus on those variables?
I particularly like this one math professor's take on the topic of diversity:
Faculty members responded forcefully to the draft’s notion that a group be formed to evaluate “cultural competence” with regard to new hires and research funding. “Who do you think you are?” Boris Botvinnik, a math professor, asked. “You would like to tell us what to do in terms of research in mathematics? We’d like to have a nice atmosphere of diversity on campus. We hire the best people available, and this is the only way to keep the level of the department high.”Posted by kswygert at June 1, 2005 11:50 AM