"You DO NOT FUCK WITH JEWISH DONORS."
It's nice to be a college president at an elite Ivy League School. You get to go to all the nice caviar cocktail parties. You can espouse any political view you want to whatever glitterati that think you're the cat's ass.
But, if the shit hits the fan on campus and you are called upon to defend splinter groups who cry "From the River To the Sea!" you had better defend Israel's right to exist, or your right to exist in your ivory tower will disappear.
Dig it.
what the hapless presidents should have said.
I think it's implied that you mean as far left as you want.
elite caviar parties. Free speech is encouraged as long as it aligns with the latest viewpoints from Vox, Huffpost, and Salon.
Back before the Internet and cell phone cameras that can now record drunken behavior and bad language at private parties, hallway conversations, and nascent sex scandals in Foggy Bottom (think of the late Wilbur Mills - link), members of Congress could get away with a heck of a lot.
No more.
If they so much as look sideways at a stranger, it's on Twitter ("X Files" as I now call it, and I refuse to sign up for it) before the parties have made it home that day or night.
All of this all caps bullshit has destroyed both the innocent and the guilty and now people are "canceled" and innocent family members are also destroyed at their places of work or school.
As W.B. Yeats so accurately foretold our future:
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning.
On further contemplation, yeah, exactly.
If it's a Bob Jones or other type university.
often takes outre (don't have an accent ague that this needs) groups or individuals for influential free exercise cases, cf. the Jehovah's Witness family, the Gobitis family, whose children's refusal to do the Pledge with its accompanying flag salute led to two famous free exercise and free speech decisions, the first one in 1940 and the second one in 1943, West Va. State Board of Education vs. Barnette, which overruled the first one.
Outside of a few race hustlers and other grifters, it looks like most normal humans recognize we have a problem here. I’m surprised to see so many now openly talking about the overreach of DEI programs. Companies previously worshipping at that altar are now dumping entire departments or at least letting the die on the vine.
It’s funny how America works- we always have to grab the rope and pull so damn hard in one direction. Of course, many institutions and companies alike benefit from a diverse hiring strategy. There are limitations to those strategies and some homogeneity can be useful at times and for certain ventures. But no, we had to take it to the extreme. We may overreact here and go back the other direction too far.
I agree there is risk in going too far back in the other direction, but I think (at least in the business world) it's an issue of cost, and prior to the euphoria around DEI it was pretty settled that any kind of racism or bigotry in the workplace was wholly unacceptable and grounds for dismissal. I don't think there needs to be any "reverse-DEI" programs, and most companies will just go back to the way they were before, just without bloated and mostly worthless DEI programs.
op-ed in the NYT blaming, you guessed it, racism for her resignation. Nevermind her shameful performance in front of congress as well as the credible allegations of plagiarism that likely would have gotten her students kicked out of the university. This is the fundamental problem with this oppressor/oppressed worldview, it removes any accountability specifically for individuals who bucket themselves as "oppressed". And crying racism at every turn diminishes instances of real racism. I'm sure she'll find a cushy consulting job or position within the DNC. For now good riddance to a truly terrible human being.
Congress, while heavily criticized, was not incorrect.
I think the problem with her answers to Rep. Stefanik's questions regarding whether calling for genocide of Jews violated Harvard's conduct policies wasn't that the response itself is wrong - it really isn't - it's that nobody believes that Harvard would need "context" before punishing similar statements made about other groups on campus (and rightly so - nobody should believe Harvard would need context for other calls for genocide).
Another thing to keep in mind is that the plagiarism allegations were already percolating (and I think under investigation by the Harvard Corporation) *before* her Congressional testimony, I think as soon as late October.
the scrutiny they recieved. Nobody got tenure writing a good lit review or data and methods section. Almost all of her published work, including those appearing in APSR and AJPS, two of the most imprortant journals in the discipline, utilized a methodological approach called "Ecological Inference" that was developed by her Disertation chair, Gary King. It's not shocking that she used the same, even identicle, language used by King in papers and articles to describe the approach. Lit Reviews are really attempts to tell the audience why the thing you are going to do next is important and fits into a thematic narrative. I lean toward synthesis in my lit reviews instead, but I'm not super concerned with the allegations of plagerism in Gay's lit reviews.
You mention Stanford's president being forced out this summer. His research misconduct is far more severe (Gay's sins were more of the venial variety) as he fabricated data to support his conclussions. Those conclussions lead to people chasing down rabit holes on theraputics that weren't warranted.
And I actually agree with her final paragraph in the op-ed:
College campuses in our country must remain places where students can learn, share and grow together, not spaces where proxy battles and political grandstanding take root. Universities must remain independent venues where courage and reason unite to advance truth, no matter what forces set against them.I think it's relevant to mention where the plagiarism accusations started: Christopher Rufo. The same Christopher Rufo who made his bones whipping up hysteria about "critical race theory". How many other college presidents (or professors) has Rufo investigated for plagiarism? I'm sure it was just a coincidence that Gay was the first.
the NY Post about possible plagiarism in October (at the link).
I get that Rufo has an agenda, but I don't think it has any bearing on whether there was in fact plagiarism.
I think we can agree that the NY Attorney General dislikes/is biased against/is looking to damage Donald Trump, but only Trumpers claim that this somehow makes him less guilty.
Like I said, it can be plagiarism. Might even be plagiarism that warrants termination. But in the grand scheme, I do think how these investigations get started (or publicized) is relevant.
Responding to something you posted below: Activism/politics and academics shouldn't mix. Which I think was part of her point in the op-ed.
Plenty of misconduct in the world is brought to light by unsavory characters.
Mark Felt of Watergate fame became Woodward & Bernstein's source because he was pissed at Nixon for passing him over to be FBI director after Hoover died.
Does that cast doubt on Nixon's guilt or the information he gave to the Post? I don't think so.
(ETA in response to your addition: academics and politics have been mixing a lot lately - in both directions - academics doing politics and politicians getting involved in academics. But prominent university officials making seven-figure salaries cannot expect their published works will escape scrutiny by those who are inclined to publicize rather than bury potential misconduct)
inquiries (or litmus tests) in high-education are helpful. Maybe they are elsewhere.
If academic dishonesty is so critical, then all University presidents (or faculty) should be subjected to said investigation. Not just when someone decides they don't like their politics.
There are plenty of examples of academics being fired for being dishonest. Now, you may not consider plagiarism to be comparable to falsifying data on the scale of which is worse. However when publishing, they are both material violations of professional standards.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/07/20/florida-state-fires-professor
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184289296/harvard-professor-dishonesty-francesca-gino
https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/university-of-michigan-researcher-quits-after-publishing-falsified-data/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-university-of-illinois-professor-fired-20181214-story.html
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/stanford-president-resigns-over-manipulated-research-will-retract-at-least-3-papers/
I'm aware.
Were they all fired after appropriate institutional investigations? Or did any of them get canned because they had outside actors trying to get them fired because they didn't like their politics? Were Christopher Ruffo et al. going to stop taking shots if Harvard ran an investigation that determined she plagiarised, but that it didn't rise to the level of being removed as President?
Which is my point below on how this should be handled. It's possible that Gay committed plagiarism, but that the circumstances surrounding how it played out are problematic.
We don't want McCarthyism, but can still be concerned about Communist infiltration into our institutions. So one can consider the motivation of the whistleblower, and the severity of the matter being investigated.
It's similar to an argument many of us have had with Trumpsters, including within my own family. Yes, I have no doubt some of the investigatory vigor directed at Donald Trump is politically motivated. That should be addressed and called out. But that doesn't mean it's OK for him to do the things he does.
My wife has a PhD, so I was subjected to five years of discussions about publications and life in the lab.
Digging into someone's background to find dirt is fairly standard practice in politics. Like it or not, when you take overtly political positions, someone on the other side is going to come for you.
I do agree that the practice of digging up dirt is problematic, I just don't think that the practice is unique to what happened to Gay. It is SOP in politics (which is why most normal people don't want to run for office) and some form of vetting is usually done for executive level positions in corporate America. While the motivations of her accusers should be taken into consideration, the fact remains that the accusations are valid. Given this, the motivations don't really matter all that much.
It does seem strange that none of this was identified before. How many levels of review did her work go through prior to being finalized?
I'm sure if you fed a lot of old work through modern plagiarism finding software that you'd turn up a lot of dirt on a lot of people. There's software now that's good at catching human generated data in experiments that's led to some retractions.
I'm just surprised it's not SOP to do this before hiring a president or giving someone tenure.
It was before the AI boom, but not that long ago.
That seems to be in the early years of software.
hard time - I presume that you mean the early years of the type of software used to check references in papers and such.
I was talking about my wife. Sorry.
of the University of South Carolina for plagiarizing a piece of a commencement speech (not generally considered an academic work) in 2021.
members of their own club.
Wasn't the president of Stanford just ousted over research misconduct?
I guess my point is, if the misconduct is there, then I don't really care who brings it to light. Human nature suggests to me that critics or competitors are more likely to (a) go looking and (b) go public if they find wrongdoing.
(ETA: Should the Michigan cheating scandal be discounted because Ohio State was first to raise the alarm?)
I have no problem with that. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Perhaps Harvard should've done their homework during the hiring/search process - this could have been avoided.
Going back to the original point of the thread and dealing with "rot" at academic institutions, I don't think supporting politically-targeted investigations to get rid of people we don't agree with is going to solve the problem.
EDIT: And as to why they don't "investigate their own", it has little to do with the Ivy league specifically. I'm sure they all know that if people looked hard enough, they'd all be guilty of similar attribution errors.
EDIT2: And to be clear, I do think the examples are plagiarism. So then what to be done about it? Well, it should have been handled by the same processes which govern all other academic misconduct at Harvard, including students. The result of that investigation may have warranted termination, or maybe it would have warranted something less severe.
is to stop looking for it and/or to put primary importance on the personal politics of those who uncover the misconduct?
That would seem to make the problem worse, not better.
handle it by processes that apply to all other faculty and students. And not let decisions on how it should be handled be driven by activism from those with ulterior motives.
resignation (she wasn't fired) beyond their ability to comment in the public arena.
Again, I don't see how that's a bad thing. I assume she could have demanded a formal review process beyond the secret anonymous panel the Harvard Corporation initially propped up to look at the first round of accusations (which were pretty weak in my view, in contrast to the later stuff that came out). She didn't. I assume there was a reason for that as well (the reason being she gets to keep her $900K a year professor position in Cambridge).
But if academia is going to take the position that the only allegations of misconduct that may be considered are those that (a) come from academics, and only from academics who (b) friends or allies of the subject of the investigation, then I think that says much about the quality and ethics of the academy.
Sure, they don't make the decisions. But they can certainly continue to beat the drum and stir up negative publicity to the point where she gets asked to resign (but isn't fired).
I think academia should take the position that people can be investigated and punished, but that the corrective action should not be based on whether the public perception of said correction is "sufficient".
She and her ilk set a double standard up on campus regarding speech, favoring certain groups over others. Anyone who is objective sees the double standard regarding speech on campus (what speech is considered "violence", heckler's veto for conservative speakers without any punishments), and she embarrassed her university by allowing and enabling this rot. This was all exposed and she subsequently resigned. You're probably right in that she was nudged to that position by people both inside and outside the university, but she certainly could have demanded a more formal process that may or may not have let her keep a high six-figure position. You don't like the politics behind one of the people who helped expose her plagiarism, ok. But that kind of stuff happens all the time, in the numerous examples above, not to mention politics invading our legal system as people search out grievances to sue over in order to make a political point (gay wedding cakes etc.).
Harvard is the most prestigious and well-known university in the country, I have no doubt there are plenty of qualified candidates out there who haven't plagiarized to the level she did and who would likely be more proactive in cracking down on obvious double standards for speech on campus.
she was plagiarizing, or because of (your assessment) of behavior with regard to speech on campus? And is it because of her specific actions/policies, or because you're just lumping in with "her ilk".
Your post is demonstrating my problem with the whole situation. Disagreeing with her politics, and then searching for a pretense to fire her is problematic. If you think she should be removed because of her policies related to campus speech, then make a case for that. As in Gay's case with plagiarism, "But that kind of stuff happens all the time" is rationalization, not justification.
I would agree with you but I doubt they are going to do that.
university, should not be a surprising first target.
I'm all for people digging into academic misconduct - if there's nothing there, then it doesn't matter who does the digging.
When academics and activism/politics mix, this is going to happen.
I just don't see why people leapt to excuse what seems to be pretty clear misconduct because they don't like the politics of the people who uncovered it. That seems to be counterproductive.
leading the charge (Ruffo)claimed to have a masters from Harvard when in fact he attended the Harvard Extension School.
I think this issue is an extension of cancel versus accountability. I may be wrong but suspect many of th folks who believe the good Dr. should have been fired do not believe the similar allegations against Justice Gorsuch were fair and should have been a part of his evaluation.
Is her demotion / firing justified based upon the issues discovered? I would say it probably is but I would also say she was not targeted for her plagiarism.
other than he's an anti-DEI pot stirrer and propagandist.
In this instance, however, the guy who went to the extension school did a better vetting job than the Harvard Corporation and its presidential search committee, and in less time.
And granting for the sake of discussion that the digging into Prof. Gay's publications was not motivated in the first instance by plagiarism concerns but by opposition to her real or perceived politics, it does not change the fact that real academic misconduct was found. The professor has nobody to blame but herself for that.
The lesson here may be that sometimes assholes are right.
Christopher Brunet (at the time a substack blogger and investigative journalist who follows academic stories - fraud, plagiarism, disputes on firing people, etc) was the one who raised it well before this fall. He was on to her flaws back when she was merely a Dean. But no one cared. A guy like Rufo simply expanded on and amplified what he had already done (Rufo probably now has access to significant resources). Brunet is a conservative Canadian, but not a widely read guy like Rufo. Ackman amplified what Rufo and Brunet subsequently collaborated on.
Interestingly, Ackman's current wife (2nd one) is Neri Oxman, a well known design guru / beautiful person who dated Brad Pitt before marrying Ackman in the last few years. Just today she was accused of plagiarism in her 2010 MIT PhD by Business Insider - problematic for her since she is currently a professor at MIT. [Edit: She left her MIT role in 2020, now running a design start-up...she has written her own response to Business Insider that people can review if they like]
The reality is that academia is rife with plagiarism and faulty data. Professors have the same cravings - fame, power, glory, etc - as anyone else and they cheat, lie, defraud, sexually harass at minimum at the same rate of the general population. Probably much higher given their ambition - so more like that of Wall Street types, Corporate Execs and high level Military and Religious figures.
The good news is the we are getting a bit of a Martin Luther moment here in terms of academia. Or at least we can hope. Time to clean out the Augean Stables of academia as they are rather polluted.
Should have done a better job vetting her tenure file ...
Once she was granted tenure based on the articles in question, it was off to the races.
likely correct.
She likely plagiarized and the effort to have her removed was not motivated by the plagiarism it was only an excuse. If the groups really care about plagiarism, they can look at a lot of folks but we know they dont.
I won't defend the people being questioned, but she is a clown who apparently got her pod person implant in the past few years. As usual, ken white probably said it better.
The academics I follow said the stuff Rufo released wasn't that concerning. It was stuff that got released after that Rufo hadn't released.
I think Harvard was looking to get rid of her, but didn't want to look too beholden to donors. Then stuff from the ongoing investigation got leaked.
the reasons why there was so much resistance to "owning" it. The writer is rightly critical of the hypocrisy of her defenders.
About outside critics: on the one hand, it is true that the motive of the messenger doesn't really matter to the truth of the accusation. I'm sure Rufo has what I would call malign intent. Ultimately irrelevant. Professional dishonesty in the worlds of science and scholarship can't be rationalized away, though there are doubtless degrees of gravity. On the other hand, it is alto true that universities -- and I don't just mean the Ivies plus Stanford -- are under severe pressures from the right wing to succumb to what the business world would call a hostile takeover attempt. It's a grave threat to their mission and must be resisted. Donors can't appoint faculty -- or remove them.
I started this thread not with plagiarism in mind but regarding why universities have fallen into a pit of their own making. The temptation to pontificate on the problems of the day, joined with pedagogical pampering and identity politics, explains a lot to me.
Ohio State, as much as we give them grief, is an actual institution and generally can be expected to follow large scale norms. I'm not a Mark Felt expert, but one would think he was a credible adult (albeit with an ax to grind).
Rufo is a poo-flinger that solely exists in the public eye to fight the culture wars and "own the libs". Alex Jones exists to sell fake supplements and stir up conspiracy theories. There is a reason we don't immediately give them the benefit of the doubt, and I would strenuously object to people who are shocked that we (at least initially) hold this person's statement as suspect.
Looking back to the famous Blind Man's Laptop Shop case, I think you can initially be forgiven for thinking that Rudy was a crank with a fantastical story. This is the guy, when confronted with an election case defeat, shouts "I have proof, you ain't seen nothing yet!". Why would you believe him when he said a local repair shop had the laptop of a famous person? Well sonovabitch, it was true. WHAT it meant was up for debate, but the fact that the laptop was there was true.
This is why there are positions of trust - if a fireman says my house is on fire, I believe him. If a raging drunk says my house is on fire, I'm going to be skeptical.
I think your article points out two important addtional stages:
1. If the information has been verified as true, it doesn't matter if it came from Satan himself - truth should be objective. You committed plagiarism or you didn't. It doesn't matter if the reporter is a student, a colleague, or a guy who spends his entire waking hours trying to bring you down. To deny this is to be partisan.
2. It should be ENTIRELY fair to ask that we expand such light shining to not just the foes of the reporter. Look back at "Hillary's Email Server" - rather than deny that, let's offer to expand such punitive searches to every politican. To only limit to one's political foes is, you guessed it - partisan.
I feel like some people are struggling with #1 in particular.
happen?
Saw an old Politico article online today and it appears very liklely Justice Gorsuch plagiarized in at least one article he wrote (i dont remember if they alleged more than one). I doubt Chris Rufo was upset with Gorsuch.
Take the example of Bill Ackman who was very outspoken toward the students who wrote letters supporting Hamas after 10/7 which is certainly his right and as I write back then I dont even disagree with his right to do that. Students took an action and should be willing to accept the consequences if they believe in what they did.
He set his focus on the the Harvard President after she testified before Congress. Again this is his right and is consistent with his views post 10/7. Having achieved his goal there has not turned his focus on the Harvard Board which for supporting the President.
Who didnt he go after for anti-semitic postings? Elon Mush who Ackan actually defended for antisemitic postings on X. OF course I am sure the fact he is an investor in X and likely other Musk companies is not why he views his statements differently.
The bigger problem for Musk may be at home as his outspoken view on plagiarism caused others to review his wife's dissertation and it appears she also has some problems.
based on a friend/foe analysis of the accused and accuser offputting.
I haven't read the Politico article, but it seems Justice Gorsuch's work was scrutinized during the nomination process, and I assume the usual players made the usual noise about it. In other words, the misconduct was given attention by people with a partisan axe to grind, and dismissed by people on Gorsuch's side, and the chips fell where they did accordingly.
As for Ackman, I find it kind of funny that he's being portrayed as some kind of right-wing nut - from my read of him, that's not accurate at all, but again the friend/foe thinking means he has to be coded as right wing because he (a) criticized pro-Palestine protestors and (b) talked about Claudine Gay's plagiarism.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying about Elon Musk. He's a weirdo who owns a social media platform and a rocket company. He gets tons of criticism from lots of people. Not sure Ackman's voice adds much to that chorus of boos.
For your last sentence, I think it was Ackman's wife (not Musk's, and up to now a non-participant in this episode) who was scrutinized by Business Insider for her dissertation. It appears she has owned the mistakes she has been able to verify, apologized (a distinction with Prof. Gay, I believe), and sought corrections. She's no longer in academia, and owns her own company. I guess she could fire herself, but that seems unlikely.
I would not support her for president of Harvard.
Do you think the scrutiny of Ackman's wife because of Ackman's actions is motivated by ill intent? If so, should the alleged plagiarism be ignored, discounted, or otherwise diminished?
Again, I say let the chips fall where they may. I don't get the personal investment people have with uber-rich, privileged and powerful people they don't know.
That's my problem with it. It's a separate issue than "Was this plagiarism". There were people who were more interested in achieving a specified outcome (getting Gay removed), and were going to move whatever levers they could to make that happen. Take a look at Rufo's recent Q&A with Politico, which demonstrates that point.
As I've said elsewhere, it can be simultaneously true that Gay is a plagiarist and that the circumstances surrounding how that was discovered/publicized/adjudicated represent other relevant issues (that may actually be more important than this one specific instance of academic dishonesty).
I have no specific interest in Claudine Gay. I do have a specific interest when political activists try to insert themselves into the functioning of universities based on their preferred ideology (and yes, that goes "both ways"). Maybe we can agree that in the grand scheme, having people like Christopher Rufo running around is a net negative. Arguably a more significant net negative than whether or not Claudine Gay is a plagiarist.
sides do it. I will admit that while i try not to do that myself I am sure there have been times where i have fallen into the trap. I made a book recommendation above and one of the recurring themes is the Evangelical Church doing just that due to the tribalization / politicization of the church.
Sorry if I implied Ackman was some right wing nut because I did not intend to. For very obvious personal reasons the response to 10/7 is something he deeply cares about. The point I was attempting to make is while he feels very comfortable calling out the students and the University Presidents he was more than happy to defend Musk over tweets like the following
“Soros reminds me of Magneto,” comparing billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros to the Jewish supervillain from Marvel’s X-Men series
Musk posted “You have said the actual truth” to a person on X who had promoted the conspiracy theory that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.
Of course there are a number of other posts where he traffic's in anti-semtic tropes but for some reason Ackman does not feel the same way toward Musk as he does toward the Presidents who testified.
I did mean Ackman's wife and I would say yes it is ill intent because it was done for no reason other than to strike back at Ackman. I have never been in academics but I suspect there are a lot of people reviewing papers this weekend trying to see if they have potential problems.
Agree with your last statement. Makes not one bit of difference in my life if the Harvard President is demoted. As the father of a HS senior going through the admissions process right now I will say American Universites are not my favorite thing in the world right now.
I will say as a general principle I think the attack on anti-woke / anti-CRT attack educationover the past few years is not a positive development for our society but that is a different conversation.
Was that racism, too?
Below I wrote "Everything in the NYT is based on victimhood or identity politics" in response to a post about editorial boards.
I'm glad to see that some things never change.
the interim president is a dude. All part of the effort to remove women and blacks from any positions of power so white dudes can regain the power we never really lost.
So no need for that cushy job on the DNC.
stealing other people's work, still make more than the vast majority of humans on this planet at the same place. Man she's such a victim.
The second point is interesting. Contrasting secular values vs ND's concept of in loco parentis with Catholic ethics. Both give me pause though, as the age of maturity has definitely crept higher. As a country we need to decide once and for all is 18 an adult or not? Is college the new high school?
And thanks for giving me a reason to post the University Title Generator.
What would you say, you do here?
The meathead right followed this soccer ball but will get right back to pressing issues like unisex bathrooms and woke amd pronouns.
The full article is paywalled, but I appreciate your synopsis. Do you think we are at an inflection point where real change will happen, or will the current storm blow over with no real change (other than who is sitting in the chair at the top of some universities)?
Also, I'd appreciate your thoughts on why to exclude groups like the KKK or those who would defend laws against miscegenation. I'm open minded, but my initial reaction was as follows:
1) I think you need first need to distinguish between academic and activist activities and lectures.
2) As a corollary to the first factor you summarize, I think universities should be very hesitant to invite someone to make an activist presentation or lecture as part of an official university sponsored event. I'm not suggesting that universities should actively try to quell activism, or that they should not make their facilities available to student groups who are engaged in activism; however, I think the universities should try to avoid taking a side on the issue giving rise to the activism and should not allow activists to use the university to try to pass themselves off as academics (I understand that someone can be both, but if they are making a formal university sponsored lecture, it should be academic).
3) On the academic side, I think there is an important distinction to be made between allowing a guest lecture on a certain topic versus employing someone who actively engaged in the study or promotion of a certain line of thinking. This is where I disagree with you a bit on the KKK, for example. I would have no problem with a university allowing someone to make an academic argument in favor of the KKK or racism in general. I would actually welcome that as part of a panel or symposium where differing views could be heard. I think this would help expose how thin racist arguments are while also offering the students an opportunity to witness how to dismantle weak arguments. However, when it comes to employing faculty or offering student courses, I would agree that employing someone who devoted his or her career to promoting laws against miscegenation is probably not a good idea. However, I base that more on the weak academic arguments related to miscegenation than on the topic itself. Along those lines, I would not have a problem with a university employing someone or offering courses related to the medical, moral, and/or religious arguments against transgenderism. I agree that the line in this area is not always clear, but I would err on the side of allowing the discussion as long as it's done in a an academic manner.
activism into academic study. In other words, the academic work is itself activism.
When I read about DEI requirements/statements as part of faculty evaluation and hiring, it's easy to see how activism is re-cast as academic work, even in physical sciences and other largely quantitative fields.
If academic qualifications for a teaching position in particle physics requires a certain set of beliefs or actions regarding "antiracism" or other DEI-related metrics, that to me is an example of the merger of academia and activism.
this morning. Admittedly his thread is directed toward business not academics but I think it is still applicable. I have linked the thread below it is not long but basically he views it as worthwhile and beneficial if done right but something that too often becomes a check the box activity that causes problems.
I will also say that in reading your response I was struck how different items become lumped together. I doubt it was intentioal but to me antiracism and DEI are different things. To the extent antiracism is at its core opposing racism do you have anissue with it? To the extent DEI is making an effort to hire qualified proffesors of different races or genders in an effort to promote an environment where students of differnet genders or colors can see themselves do you have an issue with that?
I think often times we discuss these items in a vacuum one way but when we start to drill down we find there are some items we support. The token check the box activism Cuban writes about is not beneficial but for the reasons he discusses really working on these topics can be.
implementations, methodologies, theories, and tangential industries. This was one of my main projects during that time. What my team concluded is that there are minimal companies or groups doing it well, and most companies were simply doing this to check the box because of the ridiculous ESG standards that were being pushed at the time. Feedback from EEs was that it generally was 1) not helpful 2) basic human decency you either have by the time you're employed or don't because you're a bad person who most likely would be fired for something else anyway and 3) demeaning or blaming. As time has passed and the initial exuberance over DEI has faded many companies are scaling back significantly or simply not taking on any services that cost additional money. The market is speaking and many of these companies that originally have gotten VC money are going belly up and in-house DEI is being de-emphasized. Equity as a concept is generally not congruent with running a functional meritocracy in business (to the extent businesses are even run as meritocracies anymore).
Much like some principles of communism, DEI sounds better than it actually is.
My impressions largely fit yours, especially with regard to (2).
Would you provide some more information on context and methods?
still think we are dealing with the impact of slavery followed by Jim Crow and when I say Jim Crow I am not just referencing the South but include things like redlining, being, shut out of union jobs and being unable to get the same benefit of the GI Bill because schools would not take you.
Lots of people are given chances others never receive based upon the success of the ancestors. For some it was admission to a top school that led to better opportunities. For others it was connection to someone who could help with their first job. They may "earn" what they receive from that point forward but was it a meritocracy that lead them to that opportunity?
I have a senior in HS who was deferred from 3 schools last month. One of those schools the daughter of a co-worker of my wife with lower test scores and lower grades was not only admitted but received a $50,000 scholarship I suspect because they view her as more likely to attend and they are not certain given my son's background. She has two college educated parents including one who is a Judge, went to a top Jesuit HS and a great Catholic grade school. Does "merit" that more than the kids at North Lawndale College Prep who need to overcome much more outside of school to achieve their success?
I understand meritocracy in the workplace but even that contains a subjective component unless you think no one ever received a promotion sucking up to the boss or riding someone else's coattails.
still even being meritocracies. I've seen plenty of unqualified people get promoted because they 1) kissed the right asses or 2) were friends with the right people. It's maddening. I don't disagree with your points either.
In my research one area where I did find that this whole "DEI" philosophy could add value is in health and savings areas. However, that's more socioeconomic-based rather than purely genetics. For example, there are certain companies that can track an employee base of a company, note where that company has at-risk EEs for health (health deserts, high risk for diabetes, etc.) and give the company tools to reach those EEs and give them options they didn't know they had for preventative medicine or second opinions. Same for savings/wealth - where EEs largely are not saving, or putting their pre-tax money in areas that are not nearly as tax-advantaged, there are tools available to help educate them and reallocate some of their savings to maximize how they save. I think those kinds of companies will have staying power if properly utilized.
As the parent of a HS senior heading off the college I am always wondering what his path will be and seems like yours is an interesting one.
incentives offered to faculty to design service components in their courses or community engagement. Not sure if this is what you mean by activism. But the trend is clearly meant as an add-on to the direct subject matter of the course. In defense of those who advocate for such engagement, there is a case to be made that college should help push students out of their social comfort zone. I won't use the word "privilege" because it carries too much baggage. But a certain segment of men and women at my former university suffered from a sense of entitlement. As a Catholic university, there is further warrant for supporting activity outside the classroom or lab. I myself successfully avoided all such supplementary work -- just not my thing. I make an exception for study abroad, depending on how it's done. I knew students for whom courses abroad were life-changing.
But they broke down which faculty signed the problematic statement that flirted w being pro hamas vs who signed onto a more reasonable statement.
The STEM plus econ bucket was about 95% in the reasonable statement camp. Non econ humanities was about 50:50.
I think for the hard sciences the dei statement is an annoying thing you do and doesn't matter much. For the humanities it's become a problem.
It's a humanities issue, so it appears that it is a real problem. I'm far from an academic, but it boggles my mind that real academics are not standing up and proclaiming the weakness of the oppressor vs. oppressed antiracism/critical theory model.
spying on us every day.
And yes, I have a tee shirt from them.
I would give anything for my kids to have a law school style syllabus that breaks out assignments class by class. Instead I get high level stuff and a DEI statement.
lunch the kid ate every day?
Disgruntled kid: "God damn it. Another peanut and jelly sandwich! 50 days in a row"
Friend: "Why don't you ask your mother to make you a different lunch?"
Disgruntled kid: ""I make my own lunch."
Is that a think in public schools?
Stolen implies the need for return to rightful owners, where we all just accept the realities of historical conquest.
criticism of Thomas Jefferson's slave ownership.
...Native American Initiatives.
It looks like every public institution in the City of Chicago has a land acknowledgement:
The City of Chicago
The Field Museum
The Art Institute of Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago
Loyola University Chicago
DePaul University
Northwestern University
Newberry Library
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago History Museum
...etc.
I just checked the suburbs. Most of them seem to not have land acknowledgement statements, though some of the school and library districts do.
It seems like an easy and almost cheap way to virtue-signal, though I wonder how much of a virtue it really is to say, "We occupy what used to be your land. We're not leaving, but want to send you this cheery note." I'm not particularly opposed to it, but also not sure what it really accomplishes, any more than renaming highways, etc.
live productions. Between the interminable land aknowledgements and the mask mandates that dragged on far past their sell-by date, I've become far more picky.
This is to say nothing of the production quality which has fallen off a cliff.
So this was your land. It was probably someone else's before that too. You took it and had it for a minute. Anyhow it's ours now and if you get some scratch together I suppose you could buy some of it but that's your business, free country n all. Anyhow where were we?
acknowledge both the stolen land and the 272 slaves who were sold to help pay off the school's debt. In our group that day were two students who were descendants of one of the slaves.
Didnt seem so trivial that day.
From whom did native Americans steal land? Wooly mammoths? The Flintstones?
You’re welcome to research the topic.
You’re such a delight to chat with, by the way. We really appreciate your contributions.
natives were all big happy family? They were fighting wars/displacing one another long before honkies invaded the continent.
Just a silly position to take.
Of course various tribes came and went from various parts of this country as the tribes' power ebbed and flowed. There's a reason the Crow hated the Lakota Sioux, to name one of many examples. And the Crow themselves pushed the Shoshone off their land in the first place.
Or rather, people can just concede the point that the European settlers of this country didn't treat the Indians very well.
You morons will never get off your merrygoround of whataboutism.
But the Indians fought each other too!
land and mocked a poster for suggesting otherwise by asking if they stole it from the Flintstones or woolly mammoths. Don’t try to dodge that now.
The point is that these land acknowledgment statements are dumb and ignore that Native Americans took land under “the old rules” — that is, before about 1945, where might made right and you could take land through conquest without remorse — just like everyone else.
But we’d lose out on a lot of virtue signaling opportunities in the present. And we don’t feel THAT bad about it after all.
In reality I have no earthly idea what your problem is, or why anyone tolerates you at all.
I'd wager NEA, NEH is making funding contingent on venue's roster of artists, etc.
posturing nonsense. Let's play to every grievance group rather than do the hard work of governance. How pathetic.
murders and thieves. AND NOW, DECK THE HALLS!
...to provide appraisals required us to sign off that neither our firm nor a predecessor firm had owned slaves.
ideology. Many businesses are moving in the opposite direction after realizing how worthless and expensive these initiatives are, and that the majority of people are not making their hiring, firing, promotion, and other work decisions based on race, gender, or other immutable characteristics that the left is obsessed with. Additionally most people in their jobs just want to keep their heads down, do a good job, and not be lectured to, so they generally don't pay much attention to this nonsense.
The stem teachers (female, BIPOC) are not enthused and tend to fill it in with fluff.
Public Univ's create mandatory student fees and then allow them to be doled out to any number of official student groups who then use the money to pay for their activities. You can imagine Jewish students are none too pleased to see their monies fund SJP and WOL, whose originators have connections to Hamas and other terrorist groups.
I think universities have to maintain order and discipline in order to be effective learning environments. And part of that means students cannot directly or imply to threaten the lives of other humans in a public fashion. So you can write or say whatever, but you can't imply murder or genocide at your protests. So if the white supremacists want to write a term paper- that's fine, but we're not letting you don the white robes and march through campus. See the difference? And just because your group is kicked off campus or a student or two is booted is not the end of the world.
Who do you invite to present the racism good argument if there are no scholars involved in meaningful research on the topic? Presenting an alternative viewpoint can be good but the person presenting the alternative viewpoint needs to be worthy.
I think there is also benefit to accepting that somethings are currently settled. Does a university need to present flat earther theories to be a university? Or creation science? This list could get long quickly. I think the answer is obviously no, a university does not need to present everything to be a marketplace of ideas. The market place haas already curated and created some guardrails for discussion.
Gay failed to protect her Jewish students. Ultimately, this is why she is gone.
on my initial post. I do apologize for the firewall. But Kbyrnes helped enormously by filling in background on the Kalven report (I also welcome his invocation of the revered figure of Frank O'Malley, on whom I have written -- in the Back Room I think).
Yes, defining what's settled and therefore inadmissible isn't self-evident. I've done some teaching on issues related to the First Amendment's religion clauses (free exercise, no establishment), and it's still very much a fraught area: religious liberty issues are a favorite way for conservatives to maintain a toehold in the public square. And they often have a good case. I don't have the material in front of me at the moment, but a good example of what the law at least regarded as settled is the case involving Bob Jones University's prohibition against interracial dating (this goes back to the l983 Supreme Court case in which BJU lost its tax exempt status because the Court ruled that the government had an overriding interest in ending discrimination in higher education and that the free exercise clause did not obtain). In that limited sphere, the issue is legally settled. The question can naturally be asked whether by analogy a school that forbade same-sex marriage would also end up becoming sanctioned.
If there is not a worthy academic willing to present the viewpoint, then such viewpoint need not be represented.
However, I think there is risk to calling certain things "settled" as a way to stifle dissent or chill contrary research. For example, I don't think universities should exclude communists even though it's fairly settled these days that communism has not worked in practice. Likewise, I don't think universities should exclude climate scientists who are skeptical of the current models of anthropogenic climate change.
Personally, I think the harder questions are ones that involve certain ethical questions. For example, should (and if so, to what extent) universities allow research related to the genetic modification of human beings or the creation of cyborgs?
And I think there are genuine and interesting discussions at most institutions on the work you suggest in both paragraph 2 and paragraph 3.
Eugenics, phrenology, flat earth, young earth, etc have no real place.
...It is quite brief, but compendious of thought, I think.
Kalven Report (Accessed at provost.uchicago.edu; University of Chicago, 1967)
The Kalven Report has been much discussed over the years at Chicago; when I started there in January 1977 the debates that gave rise to the report were still fresh, and just a few years ago it was featured in the Chicago Maroon: The Kalven Report: A Discussion, Not a Law (chicagomaroon.com, Caroline Kubzansky, Managing Editor ('20-'21), May 14, 2018).
The key concepts of the report, I think, are these:
"The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic"; and
"From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values. There is another context in which questions as to the appropriate role of the university may possibly arise, situations involving university ownership of property, its receipt of funds, its awarding of honors, its membership in other organizations. Here, of necessity, the university, however it acts, must act as an institution in its corporate capacity. In the exceptional instance, these corporate activities of the university may appear so incompatible with paramount social values as to require careful assessment of the consequences."
George Stigler, who was a member of the Kalven Committee, separately suggested this alternative version of the long paragraph quoted above:
"The university when it acts in its corporate capacity as employer and property owner should, of course, conduct its affairs with honor. The university should not use these corporate activities to foster any moral or political values because such use of its facilities will impair its integrity as the home of intellectual freedom."
The Maroon article from 2018 gets into the crack in the armor, so to speak, of the Kalven Report--the "extraordinary" circumstances when the university, speaking corporately, should weight in on policy matters that are significant to society at large.
In that vein, the University High School (a/k/a The Lab School) published this piece just a few months ago: University bars land acknowledgement statements (uhighmidway.com, Clare McRoberts, Features Editor,
October 24, 2023).
(A little personal backstory. Harry Kalven was a colleague of Walter J. Blum, who, like Kalven, graduated from the College and the Law School at Chicago and then taught there from the late 1940s til his death. I lived for two years in the third floor servants' quarters of the home of Walter and Natalie Blum at 5724 S. Kimbark. Kalven had died of a heart attack at age 60 a few years before and Blum would sometimes wax eloquent about his old friend. A couple of the other committee members were Stigler (who won a Nobel in econ when I was still there); John Hope Franklin, whose Racial Equality in America lectures had just come out; and Gwin Kolb, who was a very popular teacher, an expert on Samuel Johnson and editor of the journal, Modern Philology, sort of the Frank O'Malley of the Midway. Kalven's son Jamie has been very active as a journalist on the south side and did a lot of reporting on the Laquan McDonald case.)
EDIT: I finally got the "free account" to work and have read the piece. The phrase "four legs good, two legs better" comes to mind again, as does the phrase that Kalven coined, "heckler's veto."
Institutions of higher education could do worse than to adopt the Kalven Report, though it would hardly be a panacea. I wonder what the general response would have been if the three university presidents had answered the question about genocide this way:
"The University of X is opposed to genocide. In saying this, the university does not adopt any particular party's narrative, but instead remains a forum for the free exchange of ideas." Part 1 of the answer is the "duh" part. Part 2 addresses, in a circumlocutory way, whether the university is going to condemn anyone who says that Israel practices genocide.