This article is from the Torygraph, and I’ll assume the report is accurate, though you won’t find it discussed at any Left-wing websites. Click on the screenshot below to see the piece.

The new policy:

Male, pale and stale university professors are to be given “reverse mentors” to teach them about unconscious bias, under a new Government funded scheme.

Under the project, white men in senior academic posts will be assigned a junior female colleague from an ethnic minority as a mentor.

Prof John Rowe, who is overseeing the project at Birmingham University, said he hoped the scheme will allow eminent professors to confront their own biases and leave them “feeling quite uncomfortable”.

“What is understood about unconscious bias is that we have all got it, but the more you learn about it and become conscious of it, the more you can act,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“While it is well known and obvious that women and minority groups suffer setbacks to their career progression no one really understands why.

“It’s not as if there is any overt prejudice – it is something to do with the way the system is or the way it has evolved and we needed to find out why.”

This is one of eleven “Diversity and Inclusion” projects funded by a government agency to remedy discrimination in engineering and physical science; you can read more about it at the site.

I needn’t belabor this except to say that it’s offensive, discriminatory, ageist, and even racist. Why aren’t junior white professors included? After all, they could also be agents of the Patriarchy. And can’t any white person, including women, harbor unconscious bias against minorities?  As for the palpable glee  shown by Professor Rowe, who claims that everyone (and he seems to mean old white males) harbors unconscious bias, and is joyful at making those old guys “uncomfortable,” well, it’s odious. Apparently only one demographic and gender group really harbors such biases, and everyone else is blessedly free of them.

The thought of being hectored by a “woke” person makes me queasy, and I’m glad I’m not at Birmingham University.  Yes, there might be discrimination, but this kind of hectoring won’t remedy it: it will either drive it underground or cause resentment, depending on the nature and intensity of the hectoring.

As an alternative, why not see which professors, regardless of gender, age, or race, are evincing bigotry? Or why not try hiring more minorities or women—that is, if you determine that gender and ethnic imbalance really is caused by sexism and bigotry, and that differential preferences don’t contribute? Those kinds of studies are, of course, taboo. If representation is not absolutely equal across the board, we don’t need to investigate: we just accuse and then demonize. We already know the cause. And that kind of certainty, in the absence of evidence, is dangerous.

I asked Grania for her take, which I add with her permission (her emphases):

My thoughts are that as a strategy this doesn’t really make any sense. It’s not a question of whether it is offensive or not; it makes no sense.

Look at these quotes:

“What is understood about unconscious bias is that we have all got it…”

“While it is well known and obvious that women and minority groups suffer setbacks to their career progression no one really understands why.

“It’s not as if there is any overt prejudice – it is something to do with the way the system is or the way it has evolved and we needed to find out why.”

1. Why only assign the senior professors mentors?  Clearly either everyone needs them, or no-one. The complete university experience extends way beyond the lecture theater, papers, and exams.

2. If no-one really understands the problem, the problem requires more examination rather than a ham-fisted attempt at solving the problem before you even know what it is.