There has been quite a buzz surrounding Heather Mac Donald’s Op-Ed in the LA Times. She says that UCLA would absolutely not hire Einstein. And she makes some great arguments as to why not.
Starting this fall, all faculty applicants to UCLA must document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion.” (Next year, existing UCLA faculty will also have to submit an “equity, diversity and inclusion statement” in order to be considered for promotion, following the lead of five other UC campuses.)
A modern-day Einstein, white, male but presumably not dead, would have to persuade the hiring committee that his research shows the “potential to understand the barriers facing women and racial/ethnic minorities” and his teaching addresses “different learning styles” and demonstrates the ability to “effectively teach and attract students from underrepresented communities.”
Mac Donald’s new book, The Diversity Delusion, attacks “race and gender pandering” in academia.
Students are encouraged to waste their time exploring their identities, she writes, and those identities are built around gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc., never around “accomplishments and intellectual passions — ‘budding mathematician,’ say, or ‘history fanatic’.”
Universities waste millions of dollars funding diversity bureaucrats, she writes. UCLA’s vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion is funded at $4.3 million.
Administrative bloat — such as diversity officers instead of professors — drives up college costs without helping disadvantaged students, wrote David Frum in The Atlantic in 2016. Disadvantaged students need intensive teaching and mentoring to succeed. Instead, diversity officers concentrate on “increasing demand for their own employment—via compulsory programs in ‘cultural competence’.”
Hiring a chief diversity officer doesn’t increase faculty diversity, concludes a new working paper.
Via Joanne Jacobs