The Useless "Diversity" Dump That The Academic Humanities Have Become
I should say that I obviously don't know that this is how things are at all colleges. Also, personally speaking, I mainly know professors in the social sciences, not the humanities arena. However, the experiences the writer details sound like many I've read and heard about.
There's a terrific pseudonymous piece at Quillette on how standards have been yanked from academia.
I was appointed by the dean of General Studies to serve as the chair for a writing hiring committee, a committee charged with hiring one full-time writing professor, who not only could teach first-year writing classes but also offerings in journalism. The committee of three met late in the fall semester to discuss the first group of candidates, before undertaking the second set of Skype interviews. I mentioned that I had received an email from one of the candidates and shared it with the committee members. After reading the email aloud, I argued that the missive effectively disqualified the candidate. The writing was riddled with awkward expression, malapropisms, misplaced punctuation, and other conceptual and formal problems. Rarely had a first-year student issued an email to me that evidenced more infelicitous prose. I asked my fellow committee members how we could possibly hire someone to teach writing who had written such an email, despite the fact that it represented only a piece of occasional writing. The candidate could not write. I also pointed back to her application letter, which was similarly awkward and error-laden. My committee colleagues argued that "we do not teach grammar" in our writing classes. Sure, I thought. And a surgeon doesn't take vital signs or draw blood. That doesn't mean that the surgeon wouldn't be able to do so when required.In the Skype interview following this discussion, a fellow committee member proceeded to attack the next job candidate, a candidate whom I respected. In fact, before the interview, this colleague, obviously enraged by my criticisms of her favorite, announced that she would ruthlessly attack the next candidate. She did exactly that, asking increasingly obtuse questions, while adopting a belligerent tone and aggressive posture from the start. That candidate, incidentally, had done fascinating scholarship on the history of U.S. journalism from the late 19th through the first half of the 20th Century. He had earned his Ph.D. from a top-ten English department, had since accrued considerable teaching experience in relevant subjects, and presented a record of noteworthy publications, including academic scholarship and journalism. He interviewed extremely well, except when he was harangued and badgered by the hostile interviewer. He should have been a finalist for the job. But he had a fatal flaw: he was a white, straight male.
After the interview, I chided my colleague uncompromisingly, although without a hint of bias. I believed, and still do, that her behavior during that interview was utterly unprofessional and prejudicial, and I told her so. Next, I was on the receiving end of her verbal barrage. Not only did she call me some choice expletives but also rose from her chair and posed as if to charge me physically, all the while flailing her limbs and yelling. I left the room and proceeded to the dean's office. I told the dean what had just occurred. He advised me to calm down and let it rest until the following week.
What happened next was telling. I was unwittingly enmeshed in an identity politics imbroglio. The woman who had verbally assaulted me was a black female and the candidate whom she championed was also a black female. I was informed by the dean that pursuing a grievance, or even remaining on the committee, was now "complicated." Shortly after the dean recommended that I step down from the committee, I realized I was in a corner and stepped down, going from chair to non-member.
The committee went on to hire the woman in question. Since assuming her position, the new hire posted an official faculty profile linked from Hudson's General Studies program page. Her faculty profile page betrays the same awkward prose, poor incorporation of quotes, and other problems of expression typical of first-year student writers, but usually not professors. The profile also includes a glaring grammatical error: "The two main objectives in teaching is ..." I strongly believe that her official evaluations are likely as bad as her RateMyProfessors.com reviews.
To be perfectly clear, I am not arguing against the diversification of the faculty and student populations within Hudson's General Studies program and beyond. Rather, I am suggesting that the diversity initiatives recently introduced by the university and our program have been hastily and thoughtlessly administered and mistakenly construed, to the detriment of academic integrity and real equity. Qualified academics can be found among all population groups. The university must ensure that those selected are qualified, first and foremost, not by their identities per se, but by what they know and are able to do and teach. It is sheer cynicism to suppose that qualified candidates cannot be found among minority groups. Blatant tokenism in hiring and promotion jeopardizes the integrity of higher education and also undermines the objectives that diversity initiatives aim to promote.
Further, when markers of race, gender, gender fluidity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and other factors are deemed the only criteria for diversity, students are cheated, as are those chosen to meet diversity measures on the basis of identity alone. Nothing is more essentialist or constraining than diversity understood strictly in terms of identity. Such a notion of diversity reduces "diverse" people to the status of token bearers of identity markers, relegating them to an impenetrable and largely inescapable identity chrysalis, and implicitly eliding their individuality. Meanwhile, there is no necessary connection between identity and ideas, identity and talents, identity and aspirations, or identity and beliefs.
Likewise, if we wish to foster real diversity in higher education, we must consider not only diversity of identity but also diversity of thought and perspective. This is the kind of diversity that we are supposed to recognize and foster in the first place.
Perhaps intentionally, perhaps unthinkingly, the author gave us something to Google: "The two main objectives in teaching is"...
And Google I did.
The professor mentioned -- who writes "The two main objectives in teaching is ..." -- appears to be Kaia Shivers and the school appears to be NYU. The program is their "Liberal Studies" program.
I've preserved a screenshot of Kaia Shivers' online page from NYU:
The first line of a paper she published has a similar error in the first line -- one that would disqualify a person from being my assistant. It should also disqualify a person from becoming a professor, and the notion that skin color would give a person pass is one of the most disgustingly racist things I can think of.
Negotiating Identity in Transnational Spaces: Consumption of Nollywood Films in the African Diaspora of the United StatesKaia Niambi Shivers
Journalism and Media Studies Rutgers University, New Jersey USA
The consumption of Nollywood films in the United States is a site of complex translational engagements and a location of disjunctured processes that illuminate how Diasporas are imagined, created and performed. This study focused on how three major groups in the African Diaspora community located in the New York Metropolitan area negotiate identity within the historical, political, and socio-cultural circumstances of their locality. African-Americans, Caribbean migrants, and African migrants who interact with each other via the consumption of the popular African video films, articulate an intricate and layered understanding of each other, as well as their group's meaning of blackness. These articulations show that blackness is a concept that differs inter-ethnically and intra-ethnically.
She does write in the tangled bullshitese of post-modernism, which I suspect is another plus in getting hired these days.
Shivers gets a 1.9 (out of 5) on Rate My Professor from seven students rating her. She would have done far worse, save for the one student who gave her a 5. Students clicked the box to deem her teaching either "poor" or "awful." A few examples of Shivers' reviews:
DCIM251
She's completely disorganized. Her eCollege site was just a mess and there was no consistency which was really frustrating. She was never clear about what she wanted in an assignment so students would spend half the class just clarifying. However, her assignments are still easy and consist of just making blog posts and a shared paper at the end.SOI152
I never felt the need to rate a professor until now. She's the most disorganized professor! The syllabus was copy pasted from the previous semester, so all the dates are all wrong. It's really a guessing game trying to figure out when assignments are due. Grades are never posted so you don't know how you're doing in class.152SOI
Never grades anything, does no prep for class. Exams are on things we have never seen.COM451
I have never written a professor review but felt obligated to do so. I have never been in a more unprepared and disorganized class. NOTHING was graded the entire semester nor did we ever receive feedback on anything. How is a student supposed to improve with no feedback or even know where they stand in the class. The professor was also rude.
But, hey -- she did win the diversity vote:
IDK101 Honestly if you're into the truth and knowing that people in this world are so messed up because of the small things we do on a daily basis really affecting people who we don't know, please take a class with her. I am never going to forget her because she really helped me remember how important it is to have some sort of voice in this society.
It would help if the "voice" you have includes a fifth-grader's command of grammar.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Gottschall, whose beautifully-written and insightful book, "The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch," I featured on my science podcast, is yet another exceptional person with a Ph.D. who had to leave academia because he just couldn't get more than a low-paying adjunct lecturer job. He's now completing a novel.
This guy, at any other time, would have been a plum that colleges fought over.
Now, he's just a white guy, and that makes him not-so-employable.
Ability now seems to be an afterthought in academic hiring. What's essential is that you come in the "right" color.
Wow. I have rarely seen that level of Buzzword Bingo, and I work at a Federal Agency. Well, adding NYU to my list of colleges not to hire graduates of. . .
Keith Glass at April 16, 2017 6:14 AM
"Likewise, if we wish to foster real diversity in higher education, we must consider not only diversity of identity but also diversity of thought and perspective."
That is a career ender for an academic.
The sciences aren't beyond this issue either. But it isn't as strong thankfully. I know that being a girl was worth almost an entire letter grade (B to A) in electrical engineering at OU. The cause is quite understandable. The professors were half terrified of being called sexist and getting sued. After the first two years 98% of EEs were male. The fact that women didn't want to become EEs was no defense. So they desperately tried to hold onto any women they could. Though grade inflation wasn't an effective retention policy either.
Ben at April 16, 2017 7:04 AM
There's another problem here: Grade inflation in engineering kills people dead. You don't get a second chance to design a bridge, a braking circuit, containment for chemical or nuclear processes, etc., and committees aren't going to save us when the whole committee has gotten a pass just because they paid tuition.
There are actually TWO different definitions of diversity in use today:
• The scientific definition notes the widely different experiences and genetic precursors individuals have had and seeks to bring them together to use their experiences and abilities to achieve goals.
• The colloquial/popular definition seeks to classify people by skin color.
At the same time, an astonishingly bad assertion is quietly inserted into public policy -- although these people are different, they have exactly the same abilities!
I hope you can see how idiotic that is.
More here.
Radwaste at April 16, 2017 7:37 AM
When Africans want Africa to be all-black, that's fine. When Asians want only their own specific ethnicity living in their respective countries, that's perfectly fine.
But somehow, Europeans and Americans are expected to embrace diversity, otherwise, we're bigots.
Patrick at April 16, 2017 8:00 AM
Prof. Shivers is the product of Color Blind hiring. She cannot see the red and green lines that appear under what she writes.
Wfjag at April 16, 2017 8:10 AM
Students should participate in their own learning. Wow, that's deep, man.
KateC at April 16, 2017 8:53 AM
What about students attending the universities of our foreign allies? How do they deal with diversity of thought?
Quite dramatically, it seems.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at April 16, 2017 8:55 AM
She quoted Paolo Freire.
That makes her, in the leftists' mind, a great reason to hire her.
Everything else can be ignored.
charles at April 16, 2017 9:02 AM
Oh. She's a FAMUan. That explains much. Both in terms of why she can't write, and why she got hired.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 16, 2017 9:17 AM
I am a straight white male. Whenever I hear "diversity", I know it means "anyone but me".
Steven Daniels at April 16, 2017 10:34 AM
charles: "She quoted Paolo Freire... That makes her, in the leftists' mind, a great reason to hire her."
I quoted Paulo Freire in college twice: once in a paper for a sociology class and another time in a paper I wrote in nursing school at Wazzu. Both cases earned me the conspicuous esteem of my hyper-PC, leftist instructors. They were so impressed.
I've never actually read any Paulo Freire crap. I borrowed the quote from an essay in the book The Student As Nigger by Jerry Farber, which I'd read in high school. Used the same quote in both papers. But that was probably more Freire than those two instructors had ever actually read themselves.
Ken R at April 16, 2017 10:36 AM
So I was at this cocktail party last summer. By "cocktail party," I mean backyard barbecue with one of the sweetest couples in my life, and arguably the finest hosts. They are ALL about customizing their hospitality for whoever walks through the door. There were maybe four couples that night, and one single neighbor new to the block. At some point she began her narrative of complete scholarship at one of the popular "Ivy" colleges we hear so much about.
She reminisced for a full half hour about being procedurally terrorized by some administrative flunky who wanted to give someone a hard time. Our party guest presumed she'd been selected for this torment by the color of her skin.
The fact that a four-hundred-year-old bureaucracy is likely to have some world-class fuckheads on the payroll appeared not to have occurred to her.
Nor had she considered that she'd have been one of the few available targets whose parents obviously weren't wealthy, tuition-paying, gift-giving alumni.
Later I realized the whole point of this conversational intrusion was to make it clear to all of us that She Had Been To Ivy™. And in some childish way, she was proud for feeling no gratitude, even though her ticket had been punched at no cost... A free ride for some of the most potent education on the surface of the globe.
Yet she never mentioned her major. And none of us asked, because even the dropouts at the table understood that close study of bitterness and resentment can carry you across a lifetime. She'd always have the name drop, which is what Ivy Leaguers want most dearly. And she'd learned what she most wanted to learn: Nothing.
Crid at April 16, 2017 11:52 AM
The Quillette essay is rather silly and only touches on the effects of diversity hiring at the end.
Her primary complaint is that MFAs are allowed to teach lower level writing and literature courses in her school's general education program. She believes that all writing a literature should be taught by Lit Phd's with specializations in those subjects. That it's not fair that people with lesser degrees are taking jobs from Lit Phd's.
Her writing is painfully stilted and she doesn't provide any evidence for why Phd's are necessarily better teachers of undergrad general ed classes.
The whole thing is an appeal to credentialism for it's own sake.
The only evidence she provides is the ungrammatical statement of the new hire, which she quotes verbatim so that people can look her up and humiliate her. Why was that necessary?
margo at April 16, 2017 12:54 PM
"Her writing is painfully stilted and she doesn't provide any evidence for why Phd's are necessarily better teachers of undergrad general ed classes."
Because someone who has published a lot might actually know something about writing?
The only way anything is going to change is by exposing these hiring practices to the light of day.
Higher Ed is failing in so many ways, This is just one more example of the internal rot at some of the more prestigious
Institutions that are now totally in the grip of PC culture.
Isab at April 16, 2017 7:11 PM
"Because someone who has published a lot might actually know something about writing?"
I know you're not claiming this, but the degree obviously doesn't mean the holder knows the alphabet. I have a school-days friend who has an Ed.D. - he can't write a cogent paragraph, and the simplest scientific principles are a mystery to him.
Count the best-sellers, and compare them to degrees. No correlation.
Radwaste at April 16, 2017 8:44 PM
" I have a school-days friend who has an Ed.D."
This is a made up degree. It is one step if that, above a diploma mill.
Government supervisiory jobs started demanding advanced degrees for jobs where no one interal had the time or the money to quit and go back to school. So oneline and distance learning jumped in to fill the void with more worthless pieces of paper.
Most of the post 90 MBA's are almost as worthless and are the last 15 or 20 years of JD's at a number of badly performing schools with low bar pass rates.
One of the things that controls for bad engineers is the EIT and the PE exams.
For academics, I would cheerfully settle for a passing score on Graduate Record Exam in their field of study.
The Brits award all degrees by examination. I wish the US was smart enough to go to a similar system but there has been too much government money in education to really hold anyone accountable.
Isab at April 16, 2017 10:37 PM
The problem with the Ed.D. goes back farther than that, to the 1960s at least. It exists as a degree at the insistence of the NEA; it's one of the means that they use to keep "troublemakers" (those that might challenge the union leadership or its captive school boards) out of the profession.
A friend of mine who is a long-retired teacher has told me about the early 1960s here in town, when the city was growing rapidly and they almost couldn't build schools fast enough. She tells me that back then, if you had a degree -- any degree -- you could teach primary school in town. She said they had a huge variety of people, some with liberal arts and philosophy degrees, and some with STEM degrees. Not all of them turned out to be good teachers, but she thinks that overall, they were a better group than what the city has now.
Cousin Dave at April 17, 2017 7:36 AM
"...implicitly eliding their individuality..."
Well, that's the whole point isn't it? To bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Individuality prevents the Communist/Socialist ideal being achieved.
iowaan at April 17, 2017 10:54 AM
Quote: "The consumption of Nollywood films in the United States is a site of complex translational engagements and a location of disjunctured processes that illuminate how Diasporas are imagined, created and performed."
Anyone have webpage skills? It'd be a lark to have a webpage in which people could insert almost any text and have something as unintelligible as that come out.
And yes, I know that in some academic fields, using such a webpage to created gibberish would advance rather than retard their careers.
Mike Perry at April 17, 2017 10:57 AM
People that hire are watching.
And learning who NOT to hire.
Dept Head at April 17, 2017 11:07 AM
Managers are watching.
And learning who NOT to hire.
Dept Head at April 17, 2017 11:07 AM
OT, I know, but a degree in something called "Engineering Education" has appeared, and is being used by SJW-controlled university administrations ( most of them) as the camel's nose into those sexist engineering departments. Influence the curricula, and you can Gramsci even those Neanderthals.
Back on topic, the only thing more laughable than a Ed doctorate is Masters in same. How can you have a graduate degree for 13th-16th grades?
bud at April 17, 2017 11:10 AM
"Taking from Paolo Freire, “knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention” with pedagogies that resist hegemonic regimes of knowing when those who are learning are as empowered and humanized as those who are teaching."
Ms. Alkon,
I don't think you get it. When I imagine a good class, I think of Neo getting his head jacked in to the computer systems of the Nebuchadnezzar. In a few short seconds, he knows Jiu-Jitsu, Drunken Monkey, and a whole host of of other martial arts. But even being the recipient of all of that raw educational power, Neo still isn't able to defeat Morpheus, until he is empowered and humanized to the same level as Morpheaus.
Professor Shivers is, I believe, just ahead of the curve. Someday we'll all be able to jack in to a computer to get education, and when that happens, Professor Shivers will be there waiting for us on a park bench in the projects, teaching us that left is right, up is down, and how to bend spoons WITH OUR MINDS!
And then she'll show people what you don't want them to see. She'll going to show them a world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. And where we go from there is up to us.
Pangloss at April 17, 2017 11:37 AM
"Anyone have webpage skills? It'd be a lark to have a webpage in which people could insert almost any text and have something as unintelligible as that come out."
I think you could manage it with a slight tweak to this page:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/jbc/home/chef.html
Kent G. Budge at April 17, 2017 11:38 AM
"She'll going to show them a world without rules or controls, borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible."
So in that world, I'll be free to kill everyone I don't like? Cool.
Cousin Dave at April 17, 2017 12:20 PM
"The problem with the Ed.D. goes back farther than that, to the 1960s at least. It exists as a degree at the insistence of the NEA; it's one of the means that they use to keep "troublemakers" (those that might challenge the union leadership or its captive school boards) out of the profession."
I think the problem was a bit more complicated than that. Right up until the 1960's in almost every school, the only requirement to teach anything was a college degree in it. It got you an automatic job.
Most elementary school teachers did not have college degrees. They went to Normal school, to become a teacher.
In the 1960's that changed. States started mandating teacher certification, and also that their normal school graduates go to summer school to upgrade their certificate with a bachelors degree. At that point, teachers like my mother (double major in music and english, Phi Beta Kappa, third in her college class in 1946), was forced to get a masters in Tests and measurements in order to distinguish herself from the normal school teachers with the diploma mill elementary ed degrees. It was the only masters she could get without dropping out of the work force for a couple of years because of course, it could be done in summer school like the other programs designed for teachers.
For over fifty years now these certification scams, and federal money funding them, with union support have been driving the process.
When the feds started funding this nonsense, it was Katie bar the door. Now the rot has spread all the way into the liberal arts, and is making inroads into STEM.
Isab at April 17, 2017 2:14 PM
The classic essay on post modern BS like this:
https://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html
Nick at April 17, 2017 3:24 PM
"One of the things that controls for bad engineers is the EIT and the PE exams."
I'm pretty sure most engineers don't get their PE or even EITs. Those are mostly needed in construction and even there you can focus most of the PE work from a dozen engineers down to one PE for final sign off. Far more effective is engineers are (usually) expected to produce something. Something tangible you can put your hand on. It may be as boring as a wrapper for a candy. It is reality that slowly knocks most of the bad engineers out of the field.
Ben at April 17, 2017 5:34 PM
The only kinds of diversity that matter--diversity of mind, thought, world view--are those that are actively discriminated against by humanities departments.
With my Ph.D. in the humanities, M.A. in English, and B.A. in recombinant gene technology, I have been unable to find work as anything other than an adjunct. The one exception was when I was hired as a lecturer at UNT-Dallas, and then when the administration changed, I was eliminated.
Coincidentally, I use a Darwinist and self-organizing network process approach to understanding literature, and I have Asperger's.
The former, which move me work beyond postmodernism, have ensured my inability to get a full time position. The latter ensured my losing the UNT-Dallas position (and a elementary school position and an editor job). People's attitudes toward me completely changed when I made the mistake of saying I had Asperger's, and suddenly things started happening to get rid of me.
If you think differently at all, there is no place for you at all in the humanities. The humanities is nothing but politically correct postmodernist groupthink.
Troy Camplin at April 17, 2017 6:35 PM
Yeah, the Long March has succeeded in destroying humanities education in America, at all levels. And as Isab said, Lysenkoism is making inroads into STEM.
Cousin Dave at April 18, 2017 7:07 AM
My BA with majors in history and English and a minor in philosophy was acquired from Miami University, Oxford, OH in 1959. Married I needed a job locally while hubby finished. Grabbed a job with the only school in the country built on the state line (since moved I understand) and run by the states of OH and IN. I ran the cafeteria, the library part time and taught geography.
Because I did not have a teaching degree OH required that I take courses toward one. First course was "Methods of Teaching Social Studies". First night instructor says-" There are three methods of teaching, you can teach by lecture, you can teach by discussion or you can teach by a combination of the two".
That was the high point of the eventual 18 credits in various and sundry education courses that I took over time to get permanent certificates in OH, NY, NJ and FL. I never could force myself to take enough for a MA.
Emmie Lou Tucker at April 18, 2017 10:14 AM
From her thesis:
Puts the verb -- consumption -- where the subject would ordinarily go, then somehow thinks it is a noun (pro-tip: a verb can't be the site of anything).
No need to subject myself to any more torture. Any thesis committee that would give that a pass is as incompetent as she is.
My mother was a writing and rhetoric professor at Florida Atlantic University until she retired in the mid 1990s. According to her, the march through the institutions had already destroyed the hiring decisions there.
And that was a generation ago.
Jeff Guinn at April 18, 2017 1:21 PM
Btw, Amy, I got to this via David Thompson.
Jeff Guinn at April 18, 2017 1:22 PM
I'll just park this here:
https://kaiashiversblog.wordpress.com/about/
"For the past year, the hip-hop community, the new sleeping political and economic giant has been wooed by many soothe-sayers who encourage the multi-racial, gender and ethnic collective to empower themselves in arenas outside of a b-boy cipher"
KateC at April 18, 2017 9:21 PM
Mike Perry wrote...
It'd be a lark to have a webpage in which people could insert almost any text and have something as unintelligible as that come out.
Try the Postmodernism Generator linked below. Suggest you read the bottom section first.
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
Greg Allan at April 18, 2017 11:35 PM
As long as we're bitching about typos,
"The first line of a paper she published has a similar error in the first line...."
Also, I read the first sentence in question as grammatical, albeit convoluted. The processes (plural) illuminate; the consumption (singular) does not. I guess it's ambiguous, though.
psmith at April 20, 2017 5:42 PM
Hey, Gov. Cuomo wants "free" tuition in the state of New York. I guess that's what an education there is now worth.
P. Aaron at April 23, 2017 5:31 AM
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