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| -Great Cultural Revolution |
| How college diversity statements got started as a way to weed out white and Asian job applicants |
| 2023-09-09 |
| [Hot Air] In July the Chronicle of Education published a story about University of Toronto psychology professor Yoel Inbar. The short version is that Inbar’s partner was offered a job at UCLA and she asked if they might be interested in hiring him as well. Partner hires are fairly common in academia and Inbar was invited down for an interview. It all seemed to go well but there was one out-of-the-blue question about his views on diversity statement, something he’d talked about four years earlier on a podcast called Two Psychologists Four Beers. Inbar is a progressive who supported diversity but said he wasn’t sure diversity statements were accomplishing what they were supposed to. Inbar was expecting an offer from UCLA but instead a group of 66 grad students signed and circulated a letter saying he should not be offered a job because of his views on diversity statements. And sure enough, the school caved and declined to make him an offer. Today the NY Times published a story which uses Inbar’s story as a kind of case study of the kind of debates taking place about DEI statements on college campuses. The paper summarized the arguments for and against in fairly simple terms. Supporters see the statements as a way to attract minority applicants. Critics see it as a way to enforce "ideological orthodoxy." But what’s most interesting is what comes next under a subtitle that reads "How it Started." |
| Posted by:Besoeker |