Category: college professors acting badly

Charles Murray returns to Middlebury College

March 11, 2020 • 1:50 pm

A bad reason to invite Charles Murray to Middlebury College is to incite violence, which is what happened when he was last invited three years ago (see several of my reports here). Although Murray wasn’t going to talk about race or intelligence then, that didn’t matter: he’s been forever deemed a racist for co-authoring The Bell Curve. (I strongly doubt that more than 1% of the protestors had ever read that book [I haven’t]; they were going on social-media outrage). During Murray’s last visit, his talk was interrupted (eventually it was livestreamed from an empty hall) and both he and his host were attacked, with the host, Allison Stanger, sustaining a neck injury and, as I recall, a concussion.  Along with other “cancel culture” incidents at Middlebury in the past few years, this has given the college somewhat of a bad reputation. It was becoming The Evergreen State College of the East.

A good reason for inviting Charles Murray is twofold: so the students can hear what he has to say, and so they can be tested to see if they’ve grown up. If the latter is the case, Middlebury’s reputation will be somewhat restored, and the students will have learned the art of peaceful protest. Or (my recommendation), they shouldn’t protest if they don’t know anything about Murray’s work, but simply ignore his talk, though that’s not so great, either. Actually, they should go to his talk and ask questions.

At any rate, Murray has been re-invited, though the College is now closed because of coronavirus. And the students and faculty are beginning to ramp up their protests, at least according to this letter to the editor (sent to the Middlebury President and her Senior Leadership Group) in the Middlebury Campus, the student newspaper. The letter is written by two named faculty as well as a lot of faculty too scared to divulge their identities (see below). Click on the screenshot to read about the protest.

The authors are a sociology professor and a film and media culture professor (humanities profs, of course: scientists don’t do this stuff). The rest of the signatories are part of the “Middlebury Faculty for an Inclusive Community” (MFIC), whose website says this:

Rather than generating a list of signatories, we offer some specific contacts for different areas of our work and representatives on relevant committees. Not all of members of our group want to identify themselves publicly, but here are many who feel comfortable doing so.

What a bunch of cowards—and they are professors! At any rate, the letter gives four reasons why Murray should not have been invited. Only one is partly valid, and another is weakly valid. The rest is bunk.

The first reason is the usual—Murray’s presence will “endanger members of our community”, “cause significant psychological stress”, and other ridiculous claims:

We believe that over the past three years, our campus has grown significantly in becoming a more inclusive, self-aware and responsive institution, that is open to frank conversations about racial and other inequities that structure our community and broader world. A lecture by an ultimately insignificant, debunked pseudo-scholar, arguing that race, class, and gender inequalities are a product of genetics rather than social systems and practices, would typically be a laughable and easy-to-ignore event. However, the presence of this particular insignificant, debunked pseudo-scholar reopens many wounds that we have worked hard to heal over the past three years.

We write to our administrative colleagues in Old Chapel seeking answers that we hope to receive in a public forum. The largest question that dogs us is, “How did you allow this to happen?” As stewards of Middlebury’s institutional culture, mission and reputation, you certainly recognize the many ways that this is a bad idea — no matter how events might play out on March 31, the event will cause many of us significant psychological distress, provoke in-fighting, generate bad publicity, potentially endanger members of our community, waste hours of time planning and stressing, and ultimately yield nothing beyond rekindled hostility. We believe you could — and should — have taken steps to stop this event from happening on the grounds that it was not in the best interest of the institution and goes directly against our core values of integrity, inclusivity and intellectual honesty. Murray’s talk seems predicated on the “pillar” of academic freedom, but also contradicts our other two pillars of integrity and respect.

I am so tired of rebutting this malarkey. First, Murray wasn’t (and probably isn’t) going to talk about the genetics of IQ and race. Ergo, you can’t censor him based on a 26-year-old book about those topics that you haven’t even read. Second, there’s the implicit and shabby claims that free speech is great BUT in this case Murray isn’t a valid scholar and is also purveying hate speech.

As for the psychological damage and stress, my advice to the students is this: DO NOT GO TO THE TALK! Is that so hard? Why torture yourself?

A more valid complaint by the writers is that only three people invited Murray to speak, and even the College Republicans, whom they represent, didn’t get a say. If that’s the case, the procedure for inviting speakers has been violated. Whether that should mandate cancellation is above my pay grade.

The third reason is that the College Handbook says that a full-time faculty or staff member must be the advisor of the inviting group. However, the advisor of the College Republicans is an “Executive in Residence,” one James Douglas—one of the inviters.. However, Douglas happens to be the former (Republican) governor of Vermont, the state where the College resides.  According to the MFIC’s letter, such a man can’t possibly have an understanding of the impact of the decision. That’s dubious, but if the College wanted to censor a speaker based on a technicality, they have this and the reason above to lean on. But those seem like lame excuses for censorship.

Finally, the letter says that Murray’s talk would require significant “security and facilities staffing”. Sadly, the College requires student organizations to “bear full responsibility for arranging and financing any Department of Public Safety Services that may be necessary in connection with controversial speakers.” That should not be the case, for it prevents groups from inviting the very speakers the students need to hear: controversial ones. Middlebury needs to ditch that rule immediately. And besides, if the College Republicans can fund security, why should the MFICers beef?

However, WHY would they need significant security? It’s because the protestors could wreak havoc and possibly attack the speaker and his supporters. This would not be an issue if the protestors were peaceful, or simply had a counter-event or didn’t go to the talk. A group should never be afraid to invite a controversial speaker because the protestors might be violent. If they are, they should be arrested or suspended. (As I recall, some of the protestors of Murray’s last talk were sanctioned by the College, but their punishment was never revealed.) And no group should be the costs of inviting a speaker, or at least the costs should be equalized among student groups.

In the end, because I don’t know Murray’s work or the topic of his prospective talk, I can’t judge the wisdom of inviting him. But it least it will be a test of whether Middlebury truly tolerates free speech, and whether the students and faculty have grown up. Judging by the letter above, they have a ways to go.

I’ll end with a comment made on the article by one writer:

 

Writer excoriates the University of Chicago English Department for its opposition to free speech

March 6, 2020 • 12:30 pm

 Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.

Hannah Holborn Gray, former president, The University of Chicago

 

Ben Schwarz is a well known editor and writer who was national editor of The Atlantic for 13 years after 2000, and won plaudits for his work, described in this bit from Wikipedia:

Schwarz was the literary and the national editor of The Atlantic from 2000 to 2013. In addition to writing, assigning, and editing prominent feature articles for the magazine, Schwarz ran, and wrote a regular column for, the Atlantic’s cultural and literary department, which under his editorship expanded its coverage to include popular culture and manners and mores, as well as books and ideas. The Los Angeles Times wrote that Schwarz had “reshaped the venerable magazine’s book section into the shrewdest, best-written and most surprising cultural report currently on offer between slick covers.” The writers he recruited to the Books section included Perry Anderson, Caitlin Flanagan, Sandra Tsing Loh, Christopher Hitchens, Cristina Nehring, Joseph O’Neill, Terry Castle, Clive James, and B. R. Myers.

Schwarz describes himself as politically heterodox, and is currently working on a biography of Winston Churchill.  I became acquainted with him when he wrote me with concerns about his son, who’s due to attend the University of Chicago this fall, and was planning on majoring in English. (His son describes himself as being on the political Left.) That is, until Schwarz fils saw the statement below on the U of C’s Department of English Language and Literature website (henceforth the “English Department”).

Click to access the site:

Now this is an “open letter” giving the opinion of 40 members of the department (a big majority of the faculty of 61), but, emblazoned on the departmental website, it has the cachet of being a kind of official statement. And it’s an opinion directly at odds with the Chicago Principles of Free Expression, which allow no exceptions to free speech except for the normal legal ones as well as speech that may disrupt the workings of the university:

The freedom to debate and discuss the merits of competing ideas does not, of course, mean that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish.The University may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the University.In addition, the University may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University. But these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is inconsistent with the University’s commitment to a completely free and open discussion of ideas.

There is no—repeat, no—exception for the so-called “hate speech” here, or for speech that involves bullying, racially charged attacks, nor for speech that “demeans, intimidates, or harms others.” We’ve discussed this many times, and I’ve given lots of examples (as does Schwarz in the article below) of how speech that articulates useful and discussable ideas can at the same time be claimed to “harm, demean, or intimidate others.”

Ben wrote me about his concerns. I read the statement and agreed with him that the English Department statement is directly at odds with the University’s own position.  While one could say that the English Department statement is just an expression of personal opinion and not official policy—which is true—it should not be a permanent fixture on a department website, because it’s intimidating and gives the impression that the English Department has values inimical to those of the University as a whole. In fact, when Ben’s son read that statement, he decided that while he’ll still come here next fall, he’s not going to major in English Language and Literature. So they’ve lost a student. The 40 woke professors should have just written a letter to the  student newspaper rather than having their views given permanence on their departmental website.

But then Schwarz père decided he’d confect a critical analysis of the statement above, taking it apart and showing how it contradicts the principles of our University. And so he wrote the article below in Spiked, which I recommend you read in its entirety. It’s not pleasant for me to see the University of Chicago, of which I’m proud, criticized in this way, but I have to say that it’s necessary. As our school becomes more woke, it’s essential that U of Cers like me stand up for the Chicago Principles to keep other departments from loosening the reins on free speech. (The administration still stands by the principles, thank Ceiling Cat.)

I’ll give a few quotes from Schwarz, but the four-page article (as I printed it out in 9-point type) needs a full reading. As one would expect from Schwarz, it’s hard-hitting and very well written. Some excerpts (indented):

Although the US News and World Report rankings (America’s most famous academic league table) place the University of Chicago’s English department as the best in the US, the department’s arguments and assertions evince sloppy writing and thinking. Who is to decide what constitutes ‘bullying’ or ‘racially charged attacks’? Who determines if and how speech ‘demeans, intimidates, or harms others’? Who deems what speech ‘has no place in academic life’? Would any individual who feels demeaned or harmed by speech have the power to exclude that speech from ‘academic life’? Is the English department proposing itself as the star chamber? The open letter states that ‘bullying’ and ‘racially charged attacks’ are just some of the ‘forms’ of ‘disagreement’ that are illegitimate and therefore deserving of expulsion from the academy (‘when disagreement takes such forms as…’, emphasis added). Who will decide what other ‘forms’ of ‘disagreement’ are considered worthy of banishment from campus? The department states that ‘the invocation of the right of free speech’ is illegitimate when ‘speech is no longer primarily a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions’ and that only speech that ‘makes claims and articulates ideas’ is legitimate. Who is to determine what speech pursues these aims and falls under these categories? If the open letter’s signatories ‘condemn’ and ‘repudiate’ certain on-campus expression or activities, what form will that condemnation and repudiation take? The Chicago Principles ‘guarantee all members of the university community the broadest possible latitude’ of expression, but the English department seeks the opposite goal – not free speech, but licensed speech.

Moreover, the position articulated in the department’s proclamation is contradictory and therefore ambiguous. Speech that any person or group might construe, or misconstrue, as ‘bullying’, ‘racially charged’, ‘glorif[ying] violence’, ‘demean[ing]’, or ‘harm[ful]’ – forms of expression that the English department states should be expunged from campus – could simultaneously be ‘a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions’ and constitute ‘speech that makes claims and articulates ideas’ — that is, forms of speech that the department deems permissible. Thus the position advocated in the proclamation, and any policies that might derive from that position, are irredeemably flawed. Furthermore, if the proclamation’s precepts are followed, any persons who feel that they have been ‘harm[ed]’ or ‘demeane[d]’ or that the content or manner of debate is ‘bullying’, ‘racially charged’, or ‘glori[fies]…violence’ can, in fact, ought to, shut down the offending debate or discussion. The department’s position would thus squelch free inquiry and potentially require any member of the university to be ‘condemn[ed]’ and ‘repudiate[d]’ (by the English department?) for articulating an argument because some unspecified party judges that argument to be offensive.

And the critical clash between the Chicago Principles and the English Department’s virtue-flaunting:

The English department asserts that ‘there is a crucial difference between speech that makes claims and articulates ideas, and speech that demeans, intimidates, or harms others’. But inevitably and unavoidably, expression ‘that makes claims and articulates ideas’ will be found by some – and in quite a few cases by nearly everyone – to be demeaning, hurtful and even intimidating. The Chicago Principles emphatically recognise this very point: ‘It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive… [C]oncerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.’ The Chicago Principles go on to declare unambiguously that ‘debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the university community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed’. In this way, too, the department holds a position incompatible with the principles of the university that houses and governs it.

. . . The English department affirms that all speech that can be interpreted as the ‘glorification of violence against those with whom one differs’, or as ‘hatred expressed in speech’, should be condemned and excluded from academic life. This blanket condemnation and exclusion would necessarily embrace within its ambit many important political statements and arguments. Will those who would approvingly cite the dictum ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ (a statement many believe advocates a genocidal programme against Israel’s Jews) be expelled from academic life? What about those who express Mao’s idea that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’? And what about those who invoke Thomas Jefferson’s idea that ‘the tree of liberty must be refreshed… with the blood of patriots and tyrants’?

Schwarz provides several other famous quotes that presumably would be criticized or deemed “hate speech” by the English Department, and he also discusses whether it’s exculpatory to have a simple “opinion” affixed to the website of the English Department (he and I say “NO!”). He also discusses the petition of many faculty and students calling to have Steve Bannon, invited to speak here in the fall of 2018, disinvited. (I wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune defending Bannon’s right to speak.)

Yes, the administration is still holding the line on free speech here, and for that I’m grateful. But many of the Woke are edging their toes closer to that line, and there are palpable signs that my University is weakening on its free-speech commitment in several areas. (I think we, of all Universities, need to educate incoming students about free speech.) I’ve already called the English Department statement to the University administration’s attention (as has Schwarz), yet it remains on the website. So I say to the English Department, its faculty, and all its students, “English Department: Tear down that statement!”  If you must, send it to the Chicago Maroon, but don’t leave it as a permanent part of the Department website. It creates a chilling climate for students (in English, of all places!), and has already frozen out Ben’s son from that department.

And it’s directly at odds with Hannah Gray’s statement at the top of this post.

 

More on authoritarian diversity statements at the University of California

December 30, 2019 • 11:00 am

Last month I reported on a controversial essay written by Abigail Thompson, chair of mathematics at the University of California at Davis. In that essay, posted in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (NAMS), Thompson, while favoring initiatives to increase diversity in her field, decried the mandatory “diversity statements” that the University of California now requires of all scholars applying for jobs. These were, she said, almost like the old loyalty oaths that the U of C used to require, as unless you adhered to a rubric provided by the University, you had no chance of getting a job. In these statements, you have to show tangible commitment to diversity, a track record of increasing diversity, and a plan for promoting diversity at the UC campus where you’re hired. As Thompson wrote:

Nearly all University of California campuses require that job applicants submit a “contributions to diversity” statement as a part of their application. The campuses evaluate such statements using rubrics, a detailed scoring system. Several UC programs have used these diversity statements to screen out candidates early in the search process.

A typical rubric from UC Berkeley specifies that a statement that “describes only activities that are already the expectation of Berkeley faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc)” (italics mine) merits a score of 1–2 out of a possible 5 (1 worst and 5 best) in the second section of the rubric, the “track record for advancing diversity” category.

The diversity “score” is becoming central in the hiring process. Hiring committees are being urged to start the review process by using officially provided rubrics to score the required diversity statements and to eliminate applicants who don’t achieve a scoring cut-off.

She decried this practice as a test of one’s political views:

Why is it a political test? Politics are a reflection of how you believe society should be organized. Classical liberals aspire to treat every person as a unique individual, not as a representative of their gender or their ethnic group. The sample rubric dictates that in order to get a high diversity score, a candidate must have actively engaged in promoting different identity groups as part of their professional life. The candidate should demonstrate “clear knowledge of, experience with, and interest in dimensions of diversity that result from different identities” and describe “multiple activities in depth.” Requiring candidates to believe that people should be treated differently according to their identity is indeed a political test.

The idea of using a political test as a screen for job applicants should send a shiver down our collective spine. Whatever our views on communism, most of us today are in agreement that the UC loyalty oaths of the 1950s were wrong. Whatever our views on diversity and how it can be achieved, mandatory diversity statements are equally misguided. Mathematics is not immune from political pressures on campus. In addition to David Saxon, who eventually became the president of the University of California, three mathematicians were fired for refusing to sign the loyalty oath in 1950. Mathematics must be open and welcoming to everyone, to those who have traditionally been excluded, and to those holding unpopular viewpoints. Imposing a political litmus test is not the way to achieve excellence in mathematics or in the university. Not in 1950, and not today.

This of course caused a big kerfuffle, with mathematicians and academics furiously gathering signatures on petitions and writing letters to the NAMS. You can see all of them by clicking on the screenshot below. These occupy 21 pages, most of the space taken by signatures on the two big petitions: one supporting Thompson’s stand and the other criticizing it and favoring diversity statements. There are also individual letters, most of them supporting Thompson. I won’t summarize these as you can read them for yourself. 

It would help clarify this mess if one could actually see the rubrics that the University of California uses to judge candidates. Fortunately, the one used by UC Berkeley is online, and lists the way they “grade” three aspects of a candidate’s diversity statement: their “knowledge about diversity, equity, and inclusion”; their “track record in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion”; and their “plans for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion.” You can get from 1-5 points in each of the three areas, with a minimum score of 3 and a maximum of 15. Apparently the university uses cutoffs, so that if a candidate’s diversity score falls below a threshold, they would be removed from consideration without looking at their c.v.s or other information. (I am not 100% sure about this, but Thompson implies that this is the case.)

If you want to see how these things are scored, click on the screenshot below (there are two pages in the document; don’t try to read the tiny print!):

After looking over this draconian document, I find that I agree even more with Thompson. To get passable scores, you simply cannot just have been in favor of increasing diversity, or have done only activities “that are already the expectation of faculty as evidence of commitment and involvement” (i.e., welcoming students to a lab regardless of background, or mentoring women students without having an outreach program to bring them in). That is, if you are gender- and color-blind, and treat everyone equally, or even mentor minorities or women without outreach, you’re not going to make the cut.

To get scores of 4 or 5, you must have a pretty deep knowledge of diversity and intersectionality (along with data about them), a long track record of promoting diversity in multiple ways, and specific ideas of how you would advance equity and inclusion at Berkeley. You must also agree “to be a strong advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion within the department/school/college and also their field.” That specifically means that you have to swear fealty to an ideology, and act on that fealty. I invite you to read these two brief pages to see the kind of nonacademic and ideological requirements for getting an academic job in the UC system.

I hasten to add that I am in favor of diversity in academia as both an innate good and as a way of compensating groups who have been held back by oppression, racism, or sexism. I favor a limited form of affirmative action in hiring, which means, to put it plainly, that there are occasions when academic quality must bow before other needs. But I do not favor the UC’s brand of ideological purity test, in which candidates must not only swear their commitment to diversity, but have a long track record of promoting it.

Track records will of course differ depending on many things, including a candidate’s involvement in academic matters or in useful activities that don’t directly increase diversity (popular writing, lectures in high schools, and so on). And I favor initiatives on the part of departments and colleges to increase diversity. But let us not have these purity tests, loyalty oaths, and cutoffs if your record of social justice activity isn’t up to snuff. That is a recipe for authoritarianism, for stifling needed discussions and free speech, and, not least of all, it’s an invitation to lie and distort. I still can’t accept that the purpose of universities should be to engineer society in specific ways beyond teaching the current knowledge in all fields and helping students learn how to think clearly.

One of the signatories of the anti-Thompson letter is Chad Topaz, a professor at Williams College whom we met before. He actually runs an organization that, in return for your donations, will help one or two people you designate write a diversity statement*. How honest can a statement be if you write it with the “help” of an organization that specializes in crafting diversity statements in return for money?

*Note: this link is likely to disappear, as Topaz, a real piece of work, redirects links from people he considers “white supremacists” (i.e., me) away from his site and to the Southern Poverty Law Center. But try copying this link into your browser (it won’t connect directly because Topaz is an ass): https://qsideinstitute.org/2019/11/20/if-you-donate-we-will-give-pro-bono-support-to-job-candidates-regarding-writing-diversity-statements/

UPDATE: In response to a reader question, Topaz does seem to think I’m a white supremacist. Here’s a screenshot from his Facebook page that appears on someone’s website:

h/t: BJ

UC Davis math professor demonized for criticizing required “diversity” statements for academic jobs

November 24, 2019 • 11:00 am

Abigail Thompson is a well known professor (and department Chair) of mathematics at the University of California at Davis, specializing in topology. Six years ago she became an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), and now she’s a vice president.

But in the December issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, she set herself up for public pillorying by publishing an essay criticizing the mandatory diversity statements that must accompany applications for academic jobs at some colleges and universities, including hers. You can read her short essay by clicking on the screenshot below:

Dr. Thompson is certainly not against increased diversity in math departments or colleges in general, nor against efforts to increase diversity. She just doesn’t think that “diversity statements” are the way to do it:
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.

What are these statements? I came of age in academia without the existence of such things, but they are required essays or statements that accompany professorial job applications, outlining your history of diversity-promoting efforts and proposing how you’ll increase diversity if you’re hired. And, as Thompson reports, they’re actually scored at the University of California using a point system. If you don’t say the right stuff, or come off as sufficiently enthusiastic about promoting diversity, you’re not going to get the job.

Thompson:

Nearly all University of California campuses require that job applicants submit a “contributions to diversity” statement as a part of their application. The campuses evaluate such statements using rubrics, a detailed scoring system. Several UC programs have used these diversity statements to screen out candidates early in the search process. A typical rubric from UC Berkeley specifies that a statement that “describes only activities that are already the expectation of Berkeley faculty (mentoring, treating all students the same regardless of background, etc)” (italics mine) merits a score of 1–2 out of a possible 5 (1 worst and 5 best) in the second section of the rubric, the “track record for advancing diversity” category. [JAC: note that “treating everyone the same” doesn’t get you much credit.]

The diversity “score” is becoming central in the hiring process. Hiring committees are being urged to start the review process by using officially provided rubrics to score the required diversity statements and to eliminate applicants who don’t achieve a scoring cut-off.

Now clearly “diversity” here means “ethnic diversity”, but I don’t think they say that explicitly. But those applicants who propose to increase political viewpoint diversity by, say, trying to promote conservative values and accept more conservative students, are simply not going to be hired!

If, like me, you find it worthwhile to promote equality of opportunity—and, to some extent, in outcome—in academics in general, and in STEM and math in particular, why object to diversity statements? Thompson argues, and I agree, that they are ideological statements, weeding out candidates according to whether they align with certain non-academic goals. She compares them to the “I am not a communist and will not overthrow the US government” statements once required as a condition for taking a job at University of California campuses. (I had to sign one when I became a postdoc at UC Davis in 1979.) Thompson explains:

Why is it a political test? Politics are a reflection of how you believe society should be organized. Classical liberals aspire to treat every person as a unique individual, not as a representative of their gender or their ethnic group. The sample rubric dictates that in order to get a high diversity score, a candidate must have actively engaged in promoting different identity groups as part of their professional life. The candidate should demonstrate “clear knowledge of, experience with, and interest in dimensions of diversity that result from different identities” and describe “multiple activities in depth.” Requiring candidates to believe that people should be treated differently according to their identity is indeed a political test. The idea of using a political test as a screen for job applicants should send a shiver down our collective spine.

. . . ‘Mathematics must be open and welcoming to everyone, to those who have traditionally been excluded, and to those holding unpopular viewpoints. Imposing a political litmus test is not the way to achieve excellence in mathematics or in the university.

I have to agree with Thompson here. I am a believer in at least some affirmative action in university hiring, for I see diversity of all sorts as a net good. (I haven’t yet decided how one should balance diversity versus academic quality when they conflict.) But I believe even more strongly in “affirmative action in opportunity“: that is, making sure everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, politics, or background, gets an equal opportunity from the beginning of their lives to follow their interests and to study and achieve without discrimination. We are a very long way away from that.

But I don’t believe those goals should be achieved by these coercive “diversity statements”, which are indeed chilling. You can imagine how candidates struggle to write a successful statement, and surely there exaggeration pervades many of them. Most academics who aren’t bigots simply haven’t done that much in their pre-job lives to promote diversity. And Thompson’s right: these statements are political, aimed at turning a university’s mission toward social engineering and away from teaching students how to think and how to absorb and assess the knowledge is in their chosen field.

But you’re taking your career and your reputation in danger if, like Dr. Thompson, you dare question diversity statements—even if you’re in favor of increasing diversity. This article in Inside Higher Ed (click on screenshot), describes the reactions of academics, pro and con, of requiring such statements.


The statements have sometimes been characterized by a kind of academic doublespeak, as described in that article:

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, for instance, mentions connectedness, inclusion and diversity throughout its mission and vision statements. It also requires faculty applicants to submit diversity statements. But Autumn Reed, assistant vice provost for faculty affairs, said, “My stance is that I don’t even like to call them diversity statements. The language we use is statements on commitment to inclusive excellence in higher education.” Such wording moves the discussion away from embodied characteristics of diversity to issues of pedagogical diversity and even diversity of perspective and thought, she added.

Well, let’s see if UMBC favors hiring professors who work to promote the hiring of more conservatives, libertarians, or Ayn Randians! I’m for all sorts of diversity, but in practice, as I said, the word tends to mean ethnic diversity.

Yet if you think diversity is a net good, as I do (and as the Supreme Court decided in its Bakke ruling), then you want good people from all sorts of backgrounds. To suppose that ethnicity is a marker of viewpoints, and thus diversity of ethnicity is a good surrogate for diversity of views, is patronizing, for it assumes that members of certain ethnic groups are relatively ideologically homogeneous as well as ideologically different in a predictable way from members of other groups. In other words, to use statistical theory, this view presumes that most of the variation (diversity) in thought among Americans will be explained by variation in their ethnicity.

But never mind. As you can predict, Thompson’s non-inflammatory criticism of diversity statements angered some of the woke. There have been petitions criticizing Thompson’s equation of diversity statements with McCarthy-esque “I’m not a Commie” statements, as well as statements calling for letters to her department and demands that she step down as chair of mathematics at Davis.

A particularly nasty and vitriolic example of the latter came from Chad Topaz, a professor of mathematics at (you guessed it) Williams College. On his public Facebook page, Topaz posted the following call for public censure of Thompson:

Nothing like “good ‘ol public shame”, eh? (The apostrophe goes after the “l”, by the way.) What a nasty piece of work this Topaz fellow must be!

Topaz also wrote the article shown below on his own diversity organization’s website, QSIDE. But there appears to be a conflict of interest here. Topaz funds that organization in part by giving donors the gift of “diversity statement help” from his organization [UPDATE: link removed– see here for reason why]. To wit:

Donate any amount. For every $100 raised, we will provide one hour of consulting to a graduate student or postdoc who is on the job market for tenure track jobs right now, or who will be next year. Specifically, we will give feedback on any existing diversity statement the candidate has written, and/or we will help develop an equity/diversity/inclusion plan in concert with the candidate.

For any individual who donates $500 or more, the benefactor can, if they wish, designate two people who should receive one hour of consulting services.

. . . The use of the pro bono services will be completely confidential, meaning that we will never share any information about who we help (other than the total number of individuals).

Thus, by promoting requirements for diversity statements, Topaz is also plumping for donations to his own organization. Further, the undisclosed use of outside help in writing your diversity statement seems to me more than a bit sleazy, like relying on those organizations that charge for helping college students write admissions essays. It may not be illegal, but it doesn’t seem right, since your statements are supposed to be your own, not the thoughts of others.

At any rate, here’s Topaz’s new statement on his QSIDE website [UPDATE: Link removed– see here for reason why]:

The article lists several courses of action that Topaz recommends vis-à-vis Thompson’s statement, following those given on his Facebook post. They include 1) advising your math students not to go to UC Davis; 2) emailing the AMS criticizing its publication of Thompson’s piece (he has a boilerplate letter of complaint, including the statement “I believe you have made a grave and very damaging mistake by publishing Thompson’s essay.“); 3) punishing the AMS journal by not writing or “doing favors” for it; 4) “spreading the word about this debacle on social media and in your workplaces” (the call for social-media crucifixion); 5) contacting the UC Davis math department demanding that they dump Thompson as chair; and, most self-aggrandizingly, 6) donating to Topaz’s own organization (my emphasis).

And of course Topaz tweeted, because all manner of social media must be used when shaming the Ideologically Impure:

But Topaz was hoist with his own petard. In a heartening display, people called him out for being authoritarian and McCarthy-esque himself (you can see the thread here). This was the result:

Further, there’s a new essay in Psychology Today by a social psychologist (!) and Chair of Psychology at Rutgers that gives more examples of those enraged by Thompson’s essay while at the same time defending her criticism of mandatory diversity statements (click on screenshot):

Jussim’s ending is a model for the way that we, as liberals, should deal with diversity on one hand and mandatory diversity statements on the other:

I have a sincere Diversity Statement that I chose to put online at Rutgers, which you can find here. I am pretty sure I was the first Rutgers Psych Professor to have such a statement. This was by my choice; no one urged or pressured me to do it. Rutgers has a very demographically diverse student body, and it is genuinely important to me that students know that, regardless of their racial, ethnic, political, religious, or other identity backgrounds, they are welcome here and in my lab.

However, I also respect faculty who would rather not provide a diversity statement. People who strive for excellence in their field of expertise, say, teaching and research for many academics, should not be excluded from positions because they are not sufficiently fluent in the lingo of social justice.

I also have one here, in which I point out the politicized nature of such required statements. Here are some excerpts:

I am not afraid of social justice.

I am afraid of those who will punish others for not subscribing to a toxic and oppressive view of social justice. I am afraid, not of actual social justice, but of what some people are willing to do, and are in fact now doing, in the name of social justice.

This reads almost like a prediction for what is happening to Thompson.

Amen, comrades! The second link, here, goes to another piece by Jussim, published in Quillette, that underscores the maladaptive effects of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” statements. It’s worth a read.

Georgetown University protestors shut down talk by head of Homeland Security

October 9, 2019 • 1:15 pm

Here’s another instance of deplatforming by the Left, which should be embarrassed since, in the last few years, far more speakers have been disinvited or deplatformed by the Left (traditionally the party of free speech) than by the Right (go back five years in FIRE’s disinvitation database, where the ratio for just this year is about 2:1).

Click on the screenshot to read the New York Times piece:

From the article above:

Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, was forced offstage at Georgetown University’s law school by demonstrators who shut down his planned keynote address as they protested the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

Almost immediately after Mr. McAleenan was introduced to give a speech hosted by the Migration Policy Institute, nearly a dozen advocates and law students in the crowd stood up holding signs saying, “Stand with immigrants” and “Hate is not normal.” Standing at the lectern in front of the packed auditorium, Mr. McAleenan tried to start speaking but was drowned out by chants of: “When immigrants are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.”

The protesters also read the names of the migrants who have died after being detained at the border.

. . . On Monday, Doris Meissner, the director of United States immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute and a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, pleaded with protesters to allow Mr. McAleenan to speak. She told them they were “robbing” other members of the audience who came to hear him. The demonstrators said that people at the border were being robbed of their lives.

Mr. McAleenan waited for the chants to quiet down and tried to speak at least three times. Visibly frustrated, he thanked Ms. Meissner before walking off the stage. Some people in the audience also expressed disappointment with the protesters. Mr. McAleenan was scheduled to take questions from attendees after his remarks.

“There are some very serious issues that we can talk about in candor in a real dialogue, or we can continue to shout,” Mr. McAleenan said. “I’d like to take our dialogue today above the politics and the daily news cycle and talk about the challenges and efforts that we’ve faced over the past year.”

Here’s a C-Span video of the deplatforming. Clearly, Georgetown needed to call security to clear out the disruptors, who look like petulant children.

Clearly, talk about immigration is considered “hate speech”, or at least speech that shouldn’t be heard. This is an embarrassment to Georgetown, which apparently had no security in place to quiet the protestors and prevent the de-platforming.  Whatever you think about Trump’s immigration policy (and of course I think that much of it is reprehensible), McAleenan should have the chance to make his case.  What kind of University is Georgetown? Clearly not The University of Chicago! Where were the administrators and security personnel?

Even more embarrassing is that students and faculty demanded McAleenan’s removal, and, when they didn’t get it, decided on mob action (my emphasis):

“It’s our belief that no institution should be elevating, normalizing or legitimizing any of the Trump immigration officials who are quite honestly carrying out policies that are rooted in the white nationalism that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are so blatantly trying to institutionalize,” said Nicole Regalado, the campaign director at Credo Action, an advocacy organization, which helped organize the protest.

She said more than a dozen organizations sent the organizers of the event a letter requesting that Mr. McAleenan’s invitation be rescinded. About 350 Georgetown law students, faculty members and alumni also signed a separate petition asking for his removal.

Why on earth would a Trump official speaking about immigration policy “normalize” that policy? It expresses the administration’s policy, but to say that it has “normalized” those views implies that the audience is brainless, can’t think for itself, and will be swayed toward Trumpism if they simply hear an administration official speaking. This is patronizing: the deplatformers claim the right to determine what everyone should be allowed to hear. (And, of course, it’s only their views.) Have they not heard of free speech and then counterspeech? Do they not think that counterspeech is effective, so that they must quash free speech? The answer is, of course, “yes.”

“Normalizing”, like “nuance,” is a word you should be very wary of in discussions of free speech.

Williams College’s indoctrination of its students

July 24, 2019 • 11:15 am

During the last academic year, I posted quite a bit about Williams College, as it is rated as one of America’s top liberal-arts schools and yet it was publicly melting down along the lines of The Evergreen State College. This summer, a college committee recommended a free-speech policy to help quell last year’s unrest and set some principles in stone, but the policy is flawed and, at any rate, will almost surely do nothing to address the issues that will arise when students return this fall— along with two of their woke heroes who were on medical leave last year.

I’ve now found that students entering Williams College must fulfill a requirement in the following area by taking at least one course concentrating on “Difference, power, and equity” (click on the screenshot to see the College’s webpage on this:

The summary (the emphasis is mine):

Williams College recognizes that in a diverse and globalized world, the critical examination of difference, power, and equity is an essential part of a liberal arts education. The Difference, Power, and Equity (DPE) requirement provides students with the opportunity to analyze the shaping of social differences, dynamics of unequal power, and processes of change. Courses satisfying the DPE requirement include content that encourages students to confront and reflect on the operations of difference, power and equity. They also provide students with critical tools they will need to be responsible agents of change. Employing a variety of pedagogical approaches and theoretical perspectives, DPE courses examine themes including but not limited to race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion.

All students are required to complete at least ONE course that has the DPE designation. Although this course, which may be counted toward the divisional distribution requirement, can be completed any semester before graduation, students are urged to complete the course by the end of the sophomore year. The requirement may be fulfilled with a course taken away from campus, but students wishing to use this option must petition the Committee on Educational Affairs (CEA) upon their return by providing a clear and detailed explanation of how the course taken away from Williams fulfills the DPE requirement.

This, of course, is an attempt to inculcate the students with intersectionalism, identity politics, and an overarching narrative of oppression—with the explicit aim of making students “responsible agents of change”, especially in areas of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion. (If you doubt me, have a look at the list of courses at the link given below).

Of course I’m probably on board with much of what the administrators want to happen to society, but should a college curriculum be designed to make the students behave in ways the administration wants them to behave? Clearly, the students are getting inculcated with the kind of politics the administrators would like them to adopt. Despite the college President’s recent insistence on free speech, free discourse, and mutual respect, it is clear precisely which ideology the college considers acceptable: the ideology of identity politics and differential power based on the intersectionalist hierarchy.

You can see a pdf of the DPE courses here. Now there are 292 pages of courses that fulfill the requirement, and many sound innocuous (including “The Tropics,” the only science-related course I found). And I haven’t looked at all the courses because there are so many of them. But you might be amused by going through the list, as it’s a veritable all-you-can-read buffet of Woke Culture.

Granted, this is only one requirement, and to fulfill it students need take only a single course.  But those courses are almost all about oppression narratives, and all would appeal to the Authoritarian Left. To my mind, they’re intended, as is the requirement, not to convey knowledge or to get students to question things critically—I haven’t found a single course that takes a conservative point of view—but to inculcate students with an Authoritarian Leftist attitude in order to get the students to become agents of change. That means agents who will enact the social changes that their professors and administrators want. In other words, puppets of social change.

My view of a college’s mission is to teach students to be critical thinkers, to love learning, and to instill an appreciation of knowledge that will turn them into lifelong learners and truth-seekers. If that causes them to become “responsible agents of change”, well, that’s a side benefit. But under no circumstances is a college—except, of course, for religious schools—supposed to instill into students a specific worldview or ideology. The purpose of a nonreligious college is education, not indoctrination. Williams doesn’t seem to have realized that.

Jon Haidt has laid much of the blame for the victimhood culture of colleges not on the students themselves, but on the administrators (nearly all on the Left) who perpetrate a certain view of the world comprising these three “Great Untruths”, taken from Haidt and Lukianoff’s book The Coddling of The American Mind:

1.)  We young people are fragile (“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”)

2.) We are prone to emotional reasoning and confirmation bias (“Always trust your feelings.”)

3.) We are prone to “dichotomous thinking and tribalism” (“Life is a battle between good people and evil people.”)

After looking at Williams’s requirement above (many college may have such requirements, but I haven’t investigated), I think Haidt and Lukianoff are right. The blame is largely at the door not of the students, but of the administrators and professors.

The Wall Street Journal on Oberlin vs. Gibson’s

June 28, 2019 • 11:47 am

The WSJ is a conservative paper, of course, but it would be hard for anyone to defend Oberlin College’s  behavior toward Gibson Bakery and Market when the college itself engaged in demonizing the local business, cut off commercial relations with it, and tried to characterize the Bakery as racist. The outcome: a local jury awarded Gibson’s $11 million in compensatory damages and $33 million in punitive damages. That award will almost surely be reduced later, but it’s still a huge hit, and a public embarrassment, for Oberlin. But, as the evidence showed, the College was guilty of libel. Gibson’s was not racist, did not engage in racial profiling, and yes, the College did try to damage the business.

The WSJ’s take doesn’t say much that’s new, but there is one telling sentence uttered by Oberlin’s President. The article is behind a paywall but I’ve managed to get a copy.

You might also be interested in reading Oberlin’s self-serving document “Facts and Background About the Lawsuit Filed by Gibson’s Bakery Against Oberlin College,” which, in my view, is a whitewash of what Zefrank 1 would call “the true facts”. The document even minimizes the College’s own attempt to placate the students by temporarily cutting off business with Gibson’s:

Why did the College temporarily suspend its baked goods orders with the Gibsons after the protest?

Among students, tensions remained high. Administrators sought to de-escalate that tension and looked for opportunities to rebuild trust between students and members of the community. A primary point of contention for students was the College’s continuing business relationship with Gibson’s. In an effort to remove issues that might provoke further confrontation, the College temporarily suspended its daily baked goods order with the Gibson’s on November 14, 2016.

During the suspension, students were still able to use Obie Dollars to purchase items at Gibson’s, and faculty and staff could still use departmental funds to pay for baked goods and other items.

Really? The College decided to “rebuild trust between students and members of the community” by punishing the bakery? What befuddled administrator had that idea?

A college with neurons would not have taken this step, admittedly designed to placate the students who were outraged that Gibson’s apprehended three black students for shoplifting and assault. (It came out in the trial that Gibson’s did not engage in racial profiling and had no history of racism.) A college with neurons would also have been aware of the legal consequences of such an action. A college with neurons would not have tried to incite the students in demonstrating against Gibson’s, or tried to placate students making untrue complaints. (The students, of course, were free to engage in legal demonstration and counter-speech. The College was not free to engage in damaging Gibson’s.)

The excerpt from the WSJ is below, and I’ve bolded the curious part:

The student protesters were only the proximate cause of Oberlin’s problem. The jury wasn’t particularly interested in the student protesters or their accusation of “racism,” which presumably remains protected opinion.

What really interested the jury was the actions of senior managers at Oberlin College as they related to the protesters’ other accusation against Gibson’s Bakery—that it practiced racial profiling, which is a substantive act, not mere opinion.

After the protests erupted, Oberlin suspended the college’s baked-goods orders with the Gibsons. In its official fact sheet about the event, Oberlin says it suspended the bakery “in an effort to remove issues that might provoke further confrontation with the students.”

. . . Oberlin’s president, Carmen Twillie Ambar (who was appointed nine months after the incident), visited the Journal’s editorial page Wednesday to discuss the decision and hopefully, she said, some issues on which “conservatives and progressives could agree.”

She told us Oberlin hasn’t decided whether it will appeal, but decried “using the legal system to punish opinion.” Not many in the opinion business would disagree with that.

But President Ambar also said: “You can have two different lived experiences, and both those things can be true.”

Well, Gibson’s bakery and Oberlin’s students might have experienced different emotions, and if “having divergent emotions or reactions” is a “truth”, then yes, that’s true. But President Ambar is implying here that one group of students can see the bakery as racist and the bakery can see itself as not racist, and they can both be right.

This, however, is not a matter of opinion, but of fact: the students’ “lived experience” does not in fact correspond to reality. It was a delusion, fueled by their unfulfilled social-justice rage. Oberlin helped fuel that rage, and colleges do not have “lived experience.”

The jury recognized that, and that jury, which apparently has more sense than President Ambar, decided that there were facts to be sorted out rather than just throwing up its hands and saying “both sides are professing truth.”

President Ambar has clearly bought into the worst form of “wokeness”: the claim that there is no objective truth and that “lived experience” is the arbiter of reality. But this postmodern cant didn’t fly with the local folk on the jury.

President Ambar says in the interview that Oberlin has not yet decided whether to appeal (this is harder in a civil case like this than in a criminal case). I hope, though, that no matter what they do, Oberlin will have to dig deep in their pockets to pay out Gibson’s. It’s time that colleges recognize that there’s a price to be paid for placating student outrage at the expense of the truth.

h/t: cesar