Diversity - Can it Be Achieved in Academia?

[civvver]

The thread starter may be onto something.


http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2015/december/wheaton-college-hijab-professor-same-god-larycia-hawkins.html

That's cus wheaton is a private christian university, I really doubt they are going for diversity on that campus.

Diversity is all fine and everything, and I think it should be done on the basis that universities reflect their community as a whole. If your community is like 30% black and 20% hispanic but the university is only 5% black and 10% hispanic or something then you might have an issue there.

But I don't get the LGBT thing in the name of diversity. LGBT is like 2% of the population and affects hardly anyone outside of what we read in the news. Yeah I bump into gay people at stores and stuff just like anyone else and I was friends with some in college and I have a gay cousin. But it is not something I run into on a day to day basis except in the news and entertainment media. I think they vastly overemphasize how much gay culture really affects our lives.

 

[JollyRoger]

Do you have 50 cousins? For each gay friend, do you have 49 that you know for sure are straight?

 

[Zkribbler]

The issue is that to the PC brigade, this isn't enough, and they have their ongoing 'quota' requirements, e.g. If 20% of an areas population is black, therefore 20% of students / employees must be black.

It simply doesn't work that way, and people shouldn't be recruited for simply belonging to some minority.

The Supreme Court's Bakke decision in the 70's did away with quotas.

 

[Zkribbler]

Why should such a background even matter? It doesn't affect a persons suitability to the course of study.

Because a student's educational experience is enriched by have to interact daily with conservatives, liberals, Hispanics, whites, gays, Muslims, Jews, evangelicals, the disabled, etc.

 

[Atticus]

it is an article of near-religious faith, for example, that any unfortunate condition that can be observed among the African American or Hispanic population is the result of racism and a social structure designed to exclude racial minorities from positions of affluence, influence and power.

It looks like Republicans and Christian fundamentalists like to blame their unfortunate condition on conspiracies and discrimination too:

Significantly, however, “diversity” does not seem to include political diversity.

Sociology departments would actively recruit an LGBT candidate for an opening, with something close to 100 percent consensus that this would fill a departmental need. But actively recruit a Republican, a conservative, or a born-again Christian Fundamentalist? Not a chance.

 

[Hygro]

That's cus wheaton is a private christian university, I really doubt they are going for diversity on that campus.

Diversity is all fine and everything, and I think it should be done on the basis that universities reflect their community as a whole. If your community is like 30% black and 20% hispanic but the university is only 5% black and 10% hispanic or something then you might have an issue there.

But I don't get the LGBT thing in the name of diversity. LGBT is like 2% of the population and affects hardly anyone outside of what we read in the news. Yeah I bump into gay people at stores and stuff just like anyone else and I was friends with some in college and I have a gay cousin. But it is not something I run into on a day to day basis except in the news and entertainment media. I think they vastly overemphasize how much gay culture really affects our lives.

It's over 5%.

 

[bhavv]

Because a student's educational experience is enriched by have to interact daily with conservatives, liberals, Hispanics, whites, gays, Muslims, Jews, evangelicals, the disabled, etc.

You will naturally get a diverse range of applicants and students in any academic setting.

I don't understand why there's any notion to believe that academia isn't already diverse enough.

There is also no logical reason to prefer one applicant over another based on diversity, doing so would be discriminatory against applicants with other diversity backgrounds.

 

[Hygro]

You will naturally get a diverse range of applicants and students in any academic setting.

I don't understand why there's any notion to believe that academia isn't already diverse enough.

There is also no logical reason to prefer one applicant over another based on diversity, doing so would be discriminatory against applicants with other diversity backgrounds.

How do you think it got there?

 

[bhavv]

By simply choosing applicants on their suitability / grades for the course they've applied for.

Not because of purposeful selecting of applicants based on diversity quotas.

 

[Hygro]

Is that your final answer?

 

[Ryika]

Make sure all demographics are doing fine and the quotas in universities will not be required for diversity.

Focus on quotas without addressing the underlying problems and nothing will ever change.

 

[Hygro]

Make sure all demographics are doing fine and the quotas in universities will not be required for diversity.

Focus on quotas without addressing the underlying problems and nothing will ever change.

Chicken & egg

 

[Flying Pig]

Make sure all demographics are doing fine and the quotas in universities will not be required for diversity.

Focus on quotas without addressing the underlying problems and nothing will ever change.

Oneof the underlying problems is that the people selecting candidates for admission and promotion tend to come from the same groups - in the UK, the two most prestigious universities still have the final stage of selection as a one-to-one chat in an ancient building between the candidate and a professor, usually white, male and reasonably aristocratic. If you're the sort of person who finds it easy to talk to those people - because you spend a lot of time doing it - you've got an advantage. If you're not - because you don't - you've got an immediate disdvantage, because you're not going to be able to show your potential as well. This is even assuming absolute good faith - which, given that we know that people unconsciously discriminate against people based on ethnicity, even for something as simple as an Airbnb room, is a big assumption. The second is that it benefits people moving through any career to be able to latch onto someone as a mentor and role model: it's much easier to form that relationship with somebody who is like you. I got huge benefits in my career from being able to find people whom I could fall back on as examples, but that depended on me being able to see that I could step into their shoes. As this adds up, simply parachuting more diverse people into positions of authority, irrespective of what they actually do when they get there, will improve the institution's fairness.

Put another way, your first sentence is wrong.

 

[Ryika]

Chicken & egg

No, not chicken and egg. A few highly educated students of a demographic will not solve the structural problems that that demographic experiences, fixing the structural problems of that demographic will however make that demographic produce more individuals that are able to take part in higher education without being hand-selected.

Oneof the underlying problems is that the people selecting candidates for admission and promotion tend to come from the same groups - in the UK, the two most prestigious universities still have the final stage of selection as a one-to-one chat in an ancient building between the candidate and a professor, usually white, male and reasonably aristocratic. If you're the sort of person who finds it easy to talk to those people - because you spend a lot of time doing it - you've got an advantage. If you're not - because you don't - you've got an immediate disdvantage, because you're not going to be able to show your potential as well. This is even assuming absolute good faith - which, given that we know that people unconsciously discriminate against people based on ethnicity, even for something as simple as an Airbnb room, is a big assumption. The second is that it benefits people moving through any career to be able to latch onto someone as a mentor and role model: it's much easier to form that relationship with somebody who is like you. I got huge benefits in my career from being able to find people whom I could fall back on as examples, but that depended on me being able to see that I could step into their shoes. As this adds up, simply parachuting more diverse people into positions of authority, irrespective of what they actually do when they get there, will improve the institution's fairness.

Put another way, your first sentence is wrong.

That doesn't even begin to follow. In an imaginary world with only 2 demographics that are equally capable where one group is only represented as 40% and we know the reason for that is discrimination against that group the solution to the problem is still not quotas, because quotas don't solve racism, quotas only artificially change numbers.

 

[Flying Pig]

No, not chicken and egg. A few highly educated students of a demographic will not solve the structural problems that that demographic experiences, fixing the structural problems of that demographic will however make that demographic produce more individuals that are able to take part in higher education without being hand-selected.

The issue is that there are already people from minority groups more capable than some of the people from majority groups who are getting on, who are not succeeding. Part of the problem is that the structures are set so that the people you have to impress to succeed overwhelmingly come from one group. Since those are the people who choose their own replacements, this isn't going to change of its own free will, even assuming that they have no conscious desire to exclude people from other groups, unless they start actively seeking out people who are different.

 

[Zkribbler]

You will naturally get a diverse range of applicants and students in any academic setting.

Like Bob Jones University?

 

[Ryika]

The issue is that there are already people from minority groups more capable than some of the people from majority groups who are getting on, who are not succeeding. Part of the problem is that the structures are set so that the people you have to impress to succeed overwhelmingly come from one group. Since those are the people who choose their own replacements, this isn't going to change of its own free will, even assuming that they have no conscious desire to exclude people from other groups, unless they start actively seeking out people who are different.

Discrimination on a scale that would completely block out a demographic from education does not exist in today's society.

 

[Flying Pig]

I didn't say that it did. I said that structures exist that make it more difficult to get on purely because of your demographic, effectively meaning that the barriers at every stage for black, female, gay etc candidates are higher than they are for white, male, straight etc ones. That's not fair, and it's not in the interests of the people who want the jobs in question done well.

 

[Hygro]

No, not chicken and egg. A few highly educated students of a demographic will not solve the structural problems that that demographic experiences, fixing the structural problems of that demographic will however make that demographic produce more individuals that are able to take part in higher education without being hand-selected.

That's like saying elections won't do anything because a person's vote doesn't matter. A few hundred? Try a few million. That's what's going on here. The "structural problem" is who holds power and how they got there, so by bringing in outsiders to that power structure is going to facilitate and assist structural change.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Thanks OP for posting 2 random quotes, a random link, a single sentence of your own and then walking away.

This thread has prospects and is in no way spam.