It has redoubled its efforts, testing the future of an embattled ideal
October 18, 2024 12:38 PM Subscribe
On the University of Michigan's DEI initiative. Nicholas Confessore (previously) reports on UM's diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy.
(Gift link; X/Twitter thread introduction)
A critical response by Dr. Tabbye Chavous, Vice Provost for Equity & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. R/Professors discussion.
In discussing his article, Confessore recommends two recent articles on state universities.
A critical response by Dr. Tabbye Chavous, Vice Provost for Equity & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. R/Professors discussion.
In discussing his article, Confessore recommends two recent articles on state universities.
I think that link was meant to go here - although, I have to say, that response only makes the article look stronger.
posted by kickingtheground at 12:54 PM on October 18 [2 favorites]
posted by kickingtheground at 12:54 PM on October 18 [2 favorites]
The Chronicle of Higher Education -- which is the .edu news source -- has been running articles about the assault on DEI for a few years now. They even have a tracker for anti-DEI legislation: state-by-state list (though I don't believe that non-subscribers can view any of it...so, uh, take my word for it that it's a lot), as well as a tag search across the site.
The ferocity of the attacks by the GOP is startling in their persistence and aggression. It seems like many of the politicians working against DEI take it very, very personally. I suppose that those in favor of DEI see it as a necessary push-back to centuries of imbalance, while those opposing DEI see it as..some sort of existential threat? I wish there was a way to discuss things without going straight to MAXIMUM EFFORT MUST WIN AT ALL COSTS.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:16 PM on October 18 [9 favorites]
The ferocity of the attacks by the GOP is startling in their persistence and aggression. It seems like many of the politicians working against DEI take it very, very personally. I suppose that those in favor of DEI see it as a necessary push-back to centuries of imbalance, while those opposing DEI see it as..some sort of existential threat? I wish there was a way to discuss things without going straight to MAXIMUM EFFORT MUST WIN AT ALL COSTS.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:16 PM on October 18 [9 favorites]
Ya this article is boring. Not really making any new points that haven't been expressed breathlessly over and over again by the media about college campuses. This sort of article is just the liberal NYT version of Republican attacks against any form of racial progress.
posted by grimace636 at 1:19 PM on October 18
posted by grimace636 at 1:19 PM on October 18
My bad - yes, the words "critical response" should have had this link attached.
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on October 18 [1 favorite]
posted by doctornemo at 1:19 PM on October 18 [1 favorite]
The Chronicle of Higher Education -- which is the .edu news source
The Chronicle is essential, yes, and does fine work. But it's important to remember their competitor, Inside Higher Ed, which also is a great higher ed news source.
posted by doctornemo at 1:21 PM on October 18 [12 favorites]
The Chronicle is essential, yes, and does fine work. But it's important to remember their competitor, Inside Higher Ed, which also is a great higher ed news source.
posted by doctornemo at 1:21 PM on October 18 [12 favorites]
What's most interesting about this article is that it makes no attempt to give off any insight on whether the author believes that the goals of DEI are worth pursuing.
There is a lot of room for critiquing and struggling with how DEI is employed from a lens of still helping achieve its goals and building on top of the ideas of anti-racism. But instead, this article takes the NYT "both-sides" route of letting the idea just sorta hang out there, "hey, maybe this has gone "too far". maybe this is bad".
Reminds me of the NYT trans coverage.
posted by grimace636 at 1:29 PM on October 18 [10 favorites]
There is a lot of room for critiquing and struggling with how DEI is employed from a lens of still helping achieve its goals and building on top of the ideas of anti-racism. But instead, this article takes the NYT "both-sides" route of letting the idea just sorta hang out there, "hey, maybe this has gone "too far". maybe this is bad".
Reminds me of the NYT trans coverage.
posted by grimace636 at 1:29 PM on October 18 [10 favorites]
I'm part of the higher ed DEI Industrial complex and was foolishly hoping for a meaningful critique of our work.
Yes, you can find more than a handful of grumpy people about DEI work throughout the institution. Some of them even have impressive sounding titles. No, we have erased centuries of white supremacy and patriarchy in a decade with a couple dozen staff members, a budget dwarfed by how much we spend on toilet paper, and lawmakers giving us the evil eye every ten minutes.
Here's the thing, our students and our faculty and staff are mostly still new to the ideas that we should think and interact with the world with an attitude that doesn't only have room for our cultural biases. There will be clumsy attempts at doing good as long as I live, and probably much longer.
As someone doing the work, I want to examine what indigenous cultures called these plants and used them for _AND_ have buses that bring people from the city to gardens.
There is a huge backlash against DEI work in higher education. Some of it comes from the American right, but a lot of it also coming from boring white centrists tired of being asked to grow.
posted by advicepig at 1:44 PM on October 18 [40 favorites]
Yes, you can find more than a handful of grumpy people about DEI work throughout the institution. Some of them even have impressive sounding titles. No, we have erased centuries of white supremacy and patriarchy in a decade with a couple dozen staff members, a budget dwarfed by how much we spend on toilet paper, and lawmakers giving us the evil eye every ten minutes.
Here's the thing, our students and our faculty and staff are mostly still new to the ideas that we should think and interact with the world with an attitude that doesn't only have room for our cultural biases. There will be clumsy attempts at doing good as long as I live, and probably much longer.
As someone doing the work, I want to examine what indigenous cultures called these plants and used them for _AND_ have buses that bring people from the city to gardens.
There is a huge backlash against DEI work in higher education. Some of it comes from the American right, but a lot of it also coming from boring white centrists tired of being asked to grow.
posted by advicepig at 1:44 PM on October 18 [40 favorites]
When it comes to diversity and inclusion, I really wish there was more discussion about TRANSPORTATION:
Sometime "access" can be really literal.
I don't know the numbers, but I would not be surprised if car-access is also highly correlated with other marginalization, including racial and economic marginalization.
posted by jb at 2:01 PM on October 18 [27 favorites]
D.E.I. theory and debates over nomenclature sometimes obscured real-world barriers to inclusion. The strategic plan for Michigan’s renowned arboretum and botanical gardens calls for employees to rethink the use of Latin and English plant names, which “actively erased” other “ways of knowing,” and adopt “a ‘polycentric’ paradigm, decentering singular ways of knowing and cocreating meaning through a variety of epistemic frames, including dominant scientific and horticultural modalities, Two-Eyed Seeing, Kinomaage and other cocreated power realignments.”So many people simply don't have access to places where you have to drive - many of whom don't/can't drive due to poverty and/or disability/health, or just because they never had the opportunity to learn.
Only one sentence in the 37-page plan is devoted to the biggest impediment to making the gardens accessible to a more diverse array of visitors: It is hard to get there without a car. (While the arboretum is adjacent to campus, the gardens are some miles away.) “The No. 1 issue across the board was always transportation,” said Bob Grese, who led the arboretum and gardens until 2020. “We were never able to get funding for that.”
Sometime "access" can be really literal.
I don't know the numbers, but I would not be surprised if car-access is also highly correlated with other marginalization, including racial and economic marginalization.
posted by jb at 2:01 PM on October 18 [27 favorites]
Tressie McMillan Cottom did an extended (for Instagram, anyway) video sparked by this piece yesterday. I found her observations on the tricky place DEI offices occupy in higher ed institutions very interesting.
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:15 PM on October 18 [6 favorites]
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:15 PM on October 18 [6 favorites]
I'm part of the higher ed DEI Industrial complex and was foolishly hoping for a meaningful critique of our work.
I don't have a meaningful critique, but a small, poorly thought out one: DEI efforts on campuses which are already exclusive are like arranging the deck chairs in first class the Titanic to be more "fair". By their very nature, elite universities will always be exclusive - and they are also only a drop in the bucket of our society.
So many of our equity issues are so much larger: they are in wage structures, urban planning, law enforcement, k-12 education, immigration policies, even just basic health care access. When I think of meaningfully changing education and occupational outcomes for Black students in the US, for example, I don't think it's going to happen at elite universities, but in community colleges and state universities - and only when things also change in pre-, elementary and high schools, too.
DEI programs in elite universities may be influencing leaders of tomorrow - and some of the intellectual leaders of today. But I think I would prefer that more leaders didn't come up through the elite-university pipeline at all. I would like to see worker-leaders, immigrant-leaders; writers and media people who maybe didn't go to tertiary education at all.
My other offhand critique is that some DEI practice/training is just really, really bad. I've had great DEI training, and I've had not so great. It's like restaurants - just because one has rotten food doesn't mean eating out is a bad idea, but having that kind of experience can really turn people off. My local city has a rigorous inspection program for restaurants, but no one has oversight over the provision of DEI services. There's a similar issue when it comes to indigenous consultations: various people can set up their shingle and claim to speak for one community or another, but who says who is legitimate? Obviously, it would not be appropriate for settlers to decide that, but our current situation is also very hard to navigate.
------------
I also like the comment made by one of the interviewees that modern DEI is too formulaic:
I also get very annoyed when modern American racial categories are projected onto different times and places. Race is socially constructed, so that means that it changes from society to society. Studying how people are categorized in different cultural regimes is interesting and important, but you also have to keep your mind open to seeing the slices happen in different places depending on where (and when) you are standing. After all, for the early twentieth century German Nazis, Iranians were white, but Ashekenazi Jews weren't - and in contemporary North America, this has completely flipped.
posted by jb at 2:41 PM on October 18 [23 favorites]
I don't have a meaningful critique, but a small, poorly thought out one: DEI efforts on campuses which are already exclusive are like arranging the deck chairs in first class the Titanic to be more "fair". By their very nature, elite universities will always be exclusive - and they are also only a drop in the bucket of our society.
So many of our equity issues are so much larger: they are in wage structures, urban planning, law enforcement, k-12 education, immigration policies, even just basic health care access. When I think of meaningfully changing education and occupational outcomes for Black students in the US, for example, I don't think it's going to happen at elite universities, but in community colleges and state universities - and only when things also change in pre-, elementary and high schools, too.
DEI programs in elite universities may be influencing leaders of tomorrow - and some of the intellectual leaders of today. But I think I would prefer that more leaders didn't come up through the elite-university pipeline at all. I would like to see worker-leaders, immigrant-leaders; writers and media people who maybe didn't go to tertiary education at all.
My other offhand critique is that some DEI practice/training is just really, really bad. I've had great DEI training, and I've had not so great. It's like restaurants - just because one has rotten food doesn't mean eating out is a bad idea, but having that kind of experience can really turn people off. My local city has a rigorous inspection program for restaurants, but no one has oversight over the provision of DEI services. There's a similar issue when it comes to indigenous consultations: various people can set up their shingle and claim to speak for one community or another, but who says who is legitimate? Obviously, it would not be appropriate for settlers to decide that, but our current situation is also very hard to navigate.
------------
I also like the comment made by one of the interviewees that modern DEI is too formulaic:
Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College in Minnesota, argues that modern D.E.I. is not, as some on the right hold, a triumph of critical theory or postcolonialism but of the corporatization of higher education, in which universities have tried to turn moral and political ideals into a system of formulas and dashboards. “They want a managerial approach to difference,” Khalid said. “They want no friction. But diversity inherently means friction.”There can definitely be a certain kind of checkbox mentality. I remember being asked in my graduate program how my research addressed race or gender issues. It didn't. It was research on economic inequality between households in a time and place that was (mostly) racially homogenous. It was definitely about inclusion: it was explicitly about access to resources, but it didn't fit into modern American discourse about inclusion.
I also get very annoyed when modern American racial categories are projected onto different times and places. Race is socially constructed, so that means that it changes from society to society. Studying how people are categorized in different cultural regimes is interesting and important, but you also have to keep your mind open to seeing the slices happen in different places depending on where (and when) you are standing. After all, for the early twentieth century German Nazis, Iranians were white, but Ashekenazi Jews weren't - and in contemporary North America, this has completely flipped.
posted by jb at 2:41 PM on October 18 [23 favorites]
I think that link was meant to go here - although, I have to say, that response only makes the article look stronger.
It does. Pretty embarrassing actually. Particularly for someone, who as Vice Provost for Equity & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, earned $402,800 last year.
Also interesting that her predecessor in the position was her husband. I'm sure the search was fair and inclusive, with a wide net cast.
posted by mr_roboto at 3:00 PM on October 18 [9 favorites]
It does. Pretty embarrassing actually. Particularly for someone, who as Vice Provost for Equity & Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, earned $402,800 last year.
Also interesting that her predecessor in the position was her husband. I'm sure the search was fair and inclusive, with a wide net cast.
posted by mr_roboto at 3:00 PM on October 18 [9 favorites]
Thanks, I thought that Tressie McMillan Cottom video was informative!
Obviously there's a lot going on here but it always feels unfortunate that American legalistic culture wants to handle everything as an "investigation" into potential wrongdoing and, simultaneously, a battle over abstract principles of academic freedom and the First Amendment. Here it seems like a lot of professors and students were dealing with changing mores around how to teach material involving racial slurs and outdated language—especially at a time where racism was heavily in the news and people were being overtly racist around campus—and unless someone's being a real jerk about it, the solution isn't a bunch of independent investigations and stern statements from FIRE, it's generally guiding faculty and students so they can teach and learn effectively today.
These things change and I don't think any of us can claim to predict in exactly which direction. It wasn't that long ago that male students swam nude in phys ed class but books that are now commonplace in classrooms, like Ulysses or Howl, were deemed obscene. We shouldn't expect norms to stay frozen in the '90s—or for them to evolve without a few hiccups.
posted by smelendez at 3:11 PM on October 18 [3 favorites]
Obviously there's a lot going on here but it always feels unfortunate that American legalistic culture wants to handle everything as an "investigation" into potential wrongdoing and, simultaneously, a battle over abstract principles of academic freedom and the First Amendment. Here it seems like a lot of professors and students were dealing with changing mores around how to teach material involving racial slurs and outdated language—especially at a time where racism was heavily in the news and people were being overtly racist around campus—and unless someone's being a real jerk about it, the solution isn't a bunch of independent investigations and stern statements from FIRE, it's generally guiding faculty and students so they can teach and learn effectively today.
These things change and I don't think any of us can claim to predict in exactly which direction. It wasn't that long ago that male students swam nude in phys ed class but books that are now commonplace in classrooms, like Ulysses or Howl, were deemed obscene. We shouldn't expect norms to stay frozen in the '90s—or for them to evolve without a few hiccups.
posted by smelendez at 3:11 PM on October 18 [3 favorites]
I went to Michigan in the mid-80s. It had been like 7 years since the university had made the commitment to make the student body the same 13% black that the state's population was: and it had never come close to that and the rate was now dropping, and many black students were I thought totally justified in demanding some kind of change to move toward those goals.
But the university couldn't do it, due to the lack of students who even met the minimum qualifications to succeed at UM, a really competitive school. Because poverty was even more skewed by race back then, the vast majority of the 13% of the students who were black went to really ghastly public schools where even the really smart ones never got the chops to compete with the suburban kids. So UM lowered its admission standards, and got more black students, but they weren't college-ready, academically or culturally, and a huge proportion of them flunked out, putting the university in hot water for not taking care of the black students.
So then they introduced like a one-year boot camp for the newly-admitted students, in order to make them college ready, but most of these kids were pretty smart even if poorly served by their high schools, so it took them a hot minute to figure out that all the black kids were in remedial camp, and you can imagine how well that went over. There were plenty of college-ready black kids in the state, not a very high percentage but quite a few, but they all got poached away from Michigan by even posher schools who had the same commitment to at least the perception of higher black enrollment AND the funds to bring them to Hahvahd or whatever. I remember a university official saying "Look, there's literally no way we can actually achieve this goal without creating a two-tiered university."
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:54 PM on October 18 [11 favorites]
But the university couldn't do it, due to the lack of students who even met the minimum qualifications to succeed at UM, a really competitive school. Because poverty was even more skewed by race back then, the vast majority of the 13% of the students who were black went to really ghastly public schools where even the really smart ones never got the chops to compete with the suburban kids. So UM lowered its admission standards, and got more black students, but they weren't college-ready, academically or culturally, and a huge proportion of them flunked out, putting the university in hot water for not taking care of the black students.
So then they introduced like a one-year boot camp for the newly-admitted students, in order to make them college ready, but most of these kids were pretty smart even if poorly served by their high schools, so it took them a hot minute to figure out that all the black kids were in remedial camp, and you can imagine how well that went over. There were plenty of college-ready black kids in the state, not a very high percentage but quite a few, but they all got poached away from Michigan by even posher schools who had the same commitment to at least the perception of higher black enrollment AND the funds to bring them to Hahvahd or whatever. I remember a university official saying "Look, there's literally no way we can actually achieve this goal without creating a two-tiered university."
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 8:54 PM on October 18 [11 favorites]
So then they introduced like a one-year boot camp for the newly-admitted students, in order to make them college ready,
I didn't know that, the Flint campus, it was referred to as going to Mott community college which is one the top rated community colleges in the United States and an excellent gateway program into the University of Michigan for which I circumnavigated unwittingly.
things were different in the 80s, for example in my entrance application, to Mott, they asked if one graduated from high school or have a GED. I answered no to both and was accepted.
and then transferred to the university and by my senior year, I mentioned this to a counselor which created a minor hubbub.
it was finally resolved by my high school counselor with the agreement of the Michigan board of education. I'm one of the people to have attended a major public university without a high school diploma nor GED or taking SAT.
of course we're talking about a system where you can be punished if you tell the truth if it interferes with perception for example the difference between the main campus and satellite campuses. of course the main campus has more resources to offer, botanical (Matthaei is hard to get too without a vehicle) computational, astronomical, research material, etc. but I had a teacher in the '90s get excoriated for answering this to the local paper.
but slipping through the cracks back then was a different world when there were still Soviets and was overlooked primarily because of white privilege kinda underlying the difficulties these programs that have been outlined in the last 30 years within the university system trying to achieve something which is vastly different from when I grow up in Ann Arbor in the 1970s, war, discrimination, riots.
huh.
thanks for posting this doctorneno.
posted by clavdivs at 9:56 PM on October 18 [6 favorites]
I didn't know that, the Flint campus, it was referred to as going to Mott community college which is one the top rated community colleges in the United States and an excellent gateway program into the University of Michigan for which I circumnavigated unwittingly.
things were different in the 80s, for example in my entrance application, to Mott, they asked if one graduated from high school or have a GED. I answered no to both and was accepted.
and then transferred to the university and by my senior year, I mentioned this to a counselor which created a minor hubbub.
it was finally resolved by my high school counselor with the agreement of the Michigan board of education. I'm one of the people to have attended a major public university without a high school diploma nor GED or taking SAT.
of course we're talking about a system where you can be punished if you tell the truth if it interferes with perception for example the difference between the main campus and satellite campuses. of course the main campus has more resources to offer, botanical (Matthaei is hard to get too without a vehicle) computational, astronomical, research material, etc. but I had a teacher in the '90s get excoriated for answering this to the local paper.
but slipping through the cracks back then was a different world when there were still Soviets and was overlooked primarily because of white privilege kinda underlying the difficulties these programs that have been outlined in the last 30 years within the university system trying to achieve something which is vastly different from when I grow up in Ann Arbor in the 1970s, war, discrimination, riots.
huh.
thanks for posting this doctorneno.
posted by clavdivs at 9:56 PM on October 18 [6 favorites]
When it comes to diversity and inclusion, I really wish there was more discussion about TRANSPORTATION:
One of my college cohort suffers from a muscular disease and is now requires a wheelchair to get around. He still attends University events when he can, and regularly posts about things he can't get to, or has limited access to. The issue extends beyond DEI, but I've seen reports from handicapped people that their school DEI offices didn't care about them.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:18 PM on October 18 [4 favorites]
One of my college cohort suffers from a muscular disease and is now requires a wheelchair to get around. He still attends University events when he can, and regularly posts about things he can't get to, or has limited access to. The issue extends beyond DEI, but I've seen reports from handicapped people that their school DEI offices didn't care about them.
posted by Spike Glee at 10:18 PM on October 18 [4 favorites]
I really wish there was more discussion about TRANSPORTATION
One of the things that irritates me a bit about this article is that the article is that the aside about the Matthaei Botanical Gardens reads a lot to me like a "gotcha" that doesn't address the real issues. The Matthaei Botanical Gardens are nice, and it's not good that a University garden is so far away and inaccessible - but they're not an educational resource. It's a place you might visit a couple times a year on the weekend, maybe, if you even know about it. If it's emblematic of a broader transportation issue, surely the author could come up with a better example.
IMO, the real transportation issues have more to do with how expensive Ann Arbor is: Students with fewer resources live farther out where rent is cheaper. Many live in Ypsilanti, which is also driving up costs there. There are free and frequent buses (UM pays for the fares for students) but you can't really erase the difference between 50 minutes on a bus and 5 minutes, and I'm sure there are students that are not along one of the major corridors who have more issues. But that's a harder problem to write a "gotcha" about, because it's more complicated than the people in the University's DEI program being fluffy-headed liberals who are more interested in virtue signalling than in real solutions.
I do not think that adding more frequent bus service to the Matthaei Gardens would do much to help enroll - and keep - students that UM is currently not serving well. It's basically a park that most students probably don't even know exists. I think the author threw it in there because they know talking about transportation issues sounds good, but it's just as much of (if not more of) a fig leaf than changing some informational placards to include other names (which would not cost as much money). If you have that money, it would be much better spent on something else.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:46 AM on October 19 [6 favorites]
One of the things that irritates me a bit about this article is that the article is that the aside about the Matthaei Botanical Gardens reads a lot to me like a "gotcha" that doesn't address the real issues. The Matthaei Botanical Gardens are nice, and it's not good that a University garden is so far away and inaccessible - but they're not an educational resource. It's a place you might visit a couple times a year on the weekend, maybe, if you even know about it. If it's emblematic of a broader transportation issue, surely the author could come up with a better example.
IMO, the real transportation issues have more to do with how expensive Ann Arbor is: Students with fewer resources live farther out where rent is cheaper. Many live in Ypsilanti, which is also driving up costs there. There are free and frequent buses (UM pays for the fares for students) but you can't really erase the difference between 50 minutes on a bus and 5 minutes, and I'm sure there are students that are not along one of the major corridors who have more issues. But that's a harder problem to write a "gotcha" about, because it's more complicated than the people in the University's DEI program being fluffy-headed liberals who are more interested in virtue signalling than in real solutions.
I do not think that adding more frequent bus service to the Matthaei Gardens would do much to help enroll - and keep - students that UM is currently not serving well. It's basically a park that most students probably don't even know exists. I think the author threw it in there because they know talking about transportation issues sounds good, but it's just as much of (if not more of) a fig leaf than changing some informational placards to include other names (which would not cost as much money). If you have that money, it would be much better spent on something else.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:46 AM on October 19 [6 favorites]
People who not only object to affirmative action in the form of directly trying to hire (or admit) more people from historically disadvantaged and excluded strata, but who also object to requiring that searches in hiring or admitting be expanded to include a wider pool of candidates are exposing their true motives. They aren't really interested in merit, i.e., finding the best candidate. They're protecting their racial domain.
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:57 AM on October 19 [3 favorites]
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:57 AM on October 19 [3 favorites]
People who not only object to affirmative action in the form of directly trying to hire (or admit) more people from historically disadvantaged and excluded strata, but who also object to requiring that searches in hiring or admitting be expanded to include a wider pool of candidates are exposing their true motives.
Affirmative action is illegal now, and absolutely no one objects to casting a wide net. The problem is administrative bloat that has no real impact.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:11 AM on October 19 [3 favorites]
Affirmative action is illegal now, and absolutely no one objects to casting a wide net. The problem is administrative bloat that has no real impact.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:11 AM on October 19 [3 favorites]
So much what Mr Roboto said. All the budgets and admissions preferences committed to every DEI and affirmative action program just made into a 100 point SAT bonus and tuition discounts for first-in-family college students would leave those efforts in the dust in impact terms.
posted by MattD at 11:10 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]
posted by MattD at 11:10 AM on October 19 [1 favorite]
and absolutely no one objects to casting a wide net
I have met many academics who object to casting a wide net. Casting a wide net means expanding the type of credentials you accept, or what counts as research/scholarship, or changing how teaching is assessed, or what counts as service work in the academic setting. It means questioning what folks have always believed about merit (their own and others’). It is very much still under debate.
Also administrative bloat is bad. That’s a somewhat separate issue, overlapping mostly just in who gets promoted to administration.
posted by eviemath at 7:58 PM on October 19 [3 favorites]
I have met many academics who object to casting a wide net. Casting a wide net means expanding the type of credentials you accept, or what counts as research/scholarship, or changing how teaching is assessed, or what counts as service work in the academic setting. It means questioning what folks have always believed about merit (their own and others’). It is very much still under debate.
Also administrative bloat is bad. That’s a somewhat separate issue, overlapping mostly just in who gets promoted to administration.
posted by eviemath at 7:58 PM on October 19 [3 favorites]
Sometimes "DEI" refers to a concept, goal, a set of always changing pedagogical practices, etc. and then sometimes DEI refers to a corporatized bureaucracy. The article, like a lot of reporting on DEI, has a fair bit of slippage between the two. I think if you asked most professors if having a diverse, equitable, and inclusive classroom mattered to them, they'd say yes. If you followed up if they had taken steps to ensure that, and asked them to explain what those steps were, I think the results would be more mixed. I did a PhD at Michigan for the majority of the 2010s, and while some of the professors cared about teaching, a large chunk did not, at least not to the level where they cared to keep up with latest pedagogical research - Michigan is a "very high research activity" (R1) institution, professors get hired (and tenured and promoted) for their research not their teaching skills.
So I guess what I think this article somewhat misses is that at places like Michigan, you have professors who rightly regard themselves as experts of their research discipline. Some regard teaching as an onerous task, others care about teaching and have strong opinions about what content should be taught and how best to teach it - especially those that have been doing it for decades. And then you've got this relatively new DEI bureaucracy that has ambiguous authority (in that they don't serve on hiring or tenure & promotion committees), also strong ideas about what should be taught, and how, all with little interaction with professors unless in the instances of a student complaint. Of course it's kinda a mess. From experience, both professors and DEI experts have a tendency to dig in their heels and be dogmatic.
But I guess my main critique of the article is that it implies the fault of all the campus rancor is DEI and not, I dunno, how social media algorithms are destroying our attention spans, capacity for empathy, and willingness to engage with ideas/people we don't immediately "click" with. Or that just generally, as a society, people seem less equipped to handle disagreement constructively. Or that students are likely to be stressed with debt, professors stressed by the ever decreasing state budgets set aside for public education and funding for research, there is a youth mental health crisis (and many professors struggle with their mental health), etc. The article presents no evidence the situation is particularly bad at Michigan compared to other peer institutions. There are a lot of problems right now in higher ed, and I suspect the DEI bureaucracy is doing little to fix them, but the level of public attention on DEI is undeserved - I'd rather the NYTimes and other outlets focus more on administrative bloat as a whole.
Finally, there is a lot missing from this article - Michigan recently arrested pro-Palestinian students who held a silent die-in on the quad - professors (who I know and trust) who observed it attest the students were being peaceful. The the implication that the institution is catering more to pro-Palestinian students is just wildly off.
posted by coffeecat at 9:48 AM on October 20 [7 favorites]
So I guess what I think this article somewhat misses is that at places like Michigan, you have professors who rightly regard themselves as experts of their research discipline. Some regard teaching as an onerous task, others care about teaching and have strong opinions about what content should be taught and how best to teach it - especially those that have been doing it for decades. And then you've got this relatively new DEI bureaucracy that has ambiguous authority (in that they don't serve on hiring or tenure & promotion committees), also strong ideas about what should be taught, and how, all with little interaction with professors unless in the instances of a student complaint. Of course it's kinda a mess. From experience, both professors and DEI experts have a tendency to dig in their heels and be dogmatic.
But I guess my main critique of the article is that it implies the fault of all the campus rancor is DEI and not, I dunno, how social media algorithms are destroying our attention spans, capacity for empathy, and willingness to engage with ideas/people we don't immediately "click" with. Or that just generally, as a society, people seem less equipped to handle disagreement constructively. Or that students are likely to be stressed with debt, professors stressed by the ever decreasing state budgets set aside for public education and funding for research, there is a youth mental health crisis (and many professors struggle with their mental health), etc. The article presents no evidence the situation is particularly bad at Michigan compared to other peer institutions. There are a lot of problems right now in higher ed, and I suspect the DEI bureaucracy is doing little to fix them, but the level of public attention on DEI is undeserved - I'd rather the NYTimes and other outlets focus more on administrative bloat as a whole.
Finally, there is a lot missing from this article - Michigan recently arrested pro-Palestinian students who held a silent die-in on the quad - professors (who I know and trust) who observed it attest the students were being peaceful. The the implication that the institution is catering more to pro-Palestinian students is just wildly off.
posted by coffeecat at 9:48 AM on October 20 [7 favorites]
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posted by It is regrettable that at 12:50 PM on October 18 [1 favorite]