It’s job search time. Here are the questions the university’s HR department insists every applicant answer.
I preview my answers for you here. You are welcome to copy these for your own loyalty oath.
Question One
How do you think about diversity, equity, and inclusion [DIE], including factors that influence underrepresentation of particular groups in academia, and the experiences of individuals from particular groups within academia?
How I think about Diversity, Inclusion & Equity (DIE) is this: it is one of the most asinine, harmful and destructive ideas ever invented by academia, which when you consider they also invented feminism and scientism, it is really saying something.
There will always be “underrepresentation” of groups in academia, and in any community. It is impossible to have “one of each” everywhere, and attempting that which is impossible is insane. Forcing people to DIE means there will certainly be an “underrepresentation” of those able to do the job of professing truth.
Indeed, when you DIE, there will be an “overrepresentation” of those who cannot, and so resort to professing falsehoods. This was merely terrible when these people were shunted off into Studies departments, where they could be watched and monitored, but now they will be everywhere, therefore standards will begin their long slide into a black hole.
I think the experiences of those who are “underrepresented” in academia are as interesting as those who are “wellrepresented”, which is to say, not interesting at all. If a professor is running about the campus looking for people who boast of her victim characteristics, she will not be doing her job, but rabble rousing. Universities should not hire rabble rousers.
Or that same professor might sit and lament, “They only hired me because I am a victim!” She would be right, and glum about it, and it would make me sad to think of her forlorn state, and I don’t like to be sad.
Question Two
Have you been involved in activities to advance or promote a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment or institution? We note that activities could be large and organized or they could be specific and very personal. Please tell us the role that you played, what you did, what happened and what you learned from the experience.
I have never tried to get any institution to DIE, and I have never promoted any individual to DIE. Though now that many bad institutions and people are on the path to DIE, I wish they would hurry up and do it so that they can be replaced by good institutions and people who do not wish to DIE.
That’s not to say I haven’t learned anything from the experience of watching elites pressure people to DIE. I have. I learned that people pushing DIE are either addled ideologues unable to think of the consequences of their actions, or are just simple people swept up in culture that hates its traditions and history, and who believe they are doing the right thing. That they are wrong and will never be able to see it until it is too late also makes me sad.
Question Three
Coming into a new institution will involve changes and being busy! Please let us know how you plan to integrate DIE into your role as a faculty member, including new or existing initiatives you would like to be involved with.
I sure like to be busy! And to use exclamation points! These bring out my feminine side.
I plan on integrating DIE by identifying all colleagues who are devoted to it, and then I will stay far, far away from them. I will inform all my students that I believe DIE stands for differential integral equations, or something like that, which will frighten the bad ones away.
I expect that one or more students will come to me and say “I want to DIE, and not do homework like the others.” And I will tell that student, “That is what you should do then. But please do it with somebody else.”
Do I get the job?
DIE DIE!
These questions were taken from AEI’s new report “Other Than Merit: The Prevalence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statements in University Hiring“, which is hilarious in many ways.
Regular readers already knew of university loyalty oaths, so they come as no surprise to us. And we’ve seen that these political tests have, as all bad ideas do, have seeped out of universities and into public companies.
What’s funny here is that (as one source summarized):
…the statements are significantly more common at elite schools than non-elite ones; and that jobs in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—are just as likely as jobs in the social sciences to require a diversity statement from applicants.
The last finding surprised Paul, the director of research at the Educational Freedom Institute, who told the Washington Free Beacon it was a testament to the sway of DEI ideology in academia. He and Maranto had hypothesized that the more empirical a field, the less likely it would be to use “soft” criteria when evaluating applicants. But when they actually ran the data, that hypothesis collapsed.
“The most surprising finding of the paper is that these requirements are not just limited to the softer humanities,” Paul said. “I would have expected these statements to be less common in math and engineering, but they’re not.”
So long, Higher Education, we hardly knew ye.
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I’ve noticed a push to water the STEM group down and include the “arts” thus making for the acronym STEAM. It’s not nearly as creative as DIE, of course. 😉
So long higher education? You seem to mired in the muck and unwilling to let go. I don’t think the problem is upper education, Briggs. Not in your case.
The ONLY answer is if stupid, uncaring parents stop sending their kids adn alumni stop donating. Since this is NOT happening, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, it logically follows that stupid people love this misery and you’re wasting your time.
Paul H: I like DIE best. And STEAM seems worthless since it describes nothing special–it’s just schooling. Guess even acronyms are stupid now.
We now pause our regular programming, for a message from the Australian Tourism Board:
https://youtu.be/mJqyKEWg6cg
I am not too unhappy with Art being in STEM. But I was a little disturbed when I learned that my alma matter decided to add it to the design part of Mechanical Engineering curriculum. The percentage of the project grade devoted to Art was a little high. Now, 15 years after they added that, I can see Art showing up in the technical side pragmatically and usefully. Being a doctor is more than a little art. Knowing when to go on high alert and when to just tell a patient “take 2 asprin now and call me in a week or take 2 in the morning and call me in seven days!”
There are times to be on high alert. There are times to let the body do its thing. The problem with the latter is that it doesn’t generate revenue. I ran into a ENT doctor who went about things threading that needle. His demeanor was such that trusted him. This was partly because he didn’t make me go down a $10k hole. It was partly because he talked out what he was doing and why. He retired.
In engineering, the art comes in in so many different ways. One of the lessons we had was the nail clipper. Depending on how you decide to count the most common nail clipper I have interacted with has 3 parts. A spring with sharp opposing ends. A post that guides compression. A lever arm that lets pressure be applied precisely. Part of the lesson showed all of the functions that were contained in each of the parts. If you look on amazon today, you will find nail cutters that resemble the monstrosity my Professor showed us if you take make a component for every action. There is art in the elegance. There is art in the balancing of the the functions and accepting compromises.
Teaching Art is hard. In general, it isn’t taught. It isn’t instructed. One might say it is guided. It is almost always an internal journey. A journey that our noble host tries to pass on in his writing. That journey is one that almost always fails. It almost always fails about the same that Covid fails to kill people.
Here’s my succinct DIE statement to all HR jackwagons: F. U.
“DIE stands for differential integral equations”
Now THAT was hilarious! Sort of like a compressed expander.
I had one student who drew a rather good self-portrait of himself drinking coffee in response to an exam question asking to find the temperature of coffee at a given temperature after reaching equilibrium with the glass mug it’s poured into. I gave him 1 point of partial credit for that answer. Don’t know why he was even taking physics because he was totally somewhere else most of the time.
Soon we’ll all be standing in lines signing loyalty oaths.
I understand you’re being a curmudgeon, but I find it interesting when Catholics do not look back at the catechism when approaching these kinds of questions. I went through a “diversity” training here in Canada and realized that I am so right wing I wrap around left again.
I recently interviewed a young man from university for a software development job. He is Guatemalan and soft spoken; a number of interviewers trashed him on that. THE KID HAS A 3.8 GPA. I have hired him and consider it a diversity hire because others would have turned him down because of *cultural* differences. We shall see how it works out.
Similarly, I have now seen two foreign born males who were absolutely TOP NOTCH candidates turned down because a white female has complained about “feelings”. In each instance they mumbled something about an esoteric question that wasn’t well answered and then said “and I didn’t get a good feeling from him.” Both of them would have far outstripped said females. Where was the cultural DIVERSITY? (If it happens again I will become Karen and complain).
I have seen many times that “merit” is used as an unjust sword to pick a favored candidate.
The Catholic Church proved long ago that any race is able to learn and internalize truth, and eventually solid academics. Great learning centers and libraries in Africa were destroyed by Islam. It takes many generations of hard work to properly instill the ethics and traits that make for success. I will never be a supporter of sodomy or divisive policies, but I will use an open mind to try and lift others out of poverty and build a more balanced society. It’s my duty as a Catholic who loves all of Gods children.
Russell,
The point of calling it “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity” and not “DIE you hillbillies, we will destroy everything you believe in” is to fool people like you.
You even know that they do not mean what they say, since you have seen first hand that those who play the system benefit more from DIE than theoretically more “diverse” candidates. And yet you still see the need to write a long post criticizing anyone attacking the idea of DIE.
Russell,
“The Catholic Church proved long ago that any race is able to learn and internalize truth, and eventually solid academics. Great learning centers and libraries in Africa were destroyed by Islam.”
That last sentence is quite non-sequitur-ish, but intruguing. Can you please share details about those destroyed DIE libraries in Africa? Is there a chapter missing from standard history? Do tell!
Thanks.
Russell,
Passing by everything else, I can agree that toxic femininity is a larger problem.
Mr. Clizbe, Mr. Haley is probably thinking of the centers of learning that produced scholars like St. Augustone *of Hippo*. It is right there in the name.
You are welcome
So Codex, in Africa but not African. Carthaginian and Roman.
You are welcome.
Codex,
BWAAAHAHAHA! That burn made my weekend. Cheers!
Russell Haley,
You made the mistake of making a reasoned argument and seeing both sides of an issue. If there’s one thing that Briggs, Clizbe and Harrier hate more than Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, it’s a dissenting Christian voice.
The “art” in engineering is realising that the best design is NOT one where you throw more and more resources at the problem until it caves in to your superior firepower, but rather in taking what already exists and is proven and either changing it or using it in a novel way, such the the solution is both elegant and works. This is hard to teach – indeed, may not even be teachable. But such an approach more often than not results in a solution that others recognise as “clever” and non-obvious. It’s hard work, but the end result is worth it.
Teaching Art is hard. In general, it isn’t taught. It isn’t instructed. One might say it is guided……
…
This is hard to teach – indeed, may not even be teachable…..
There is a difference between Training – which can be done by rote learning (indeed, is often done best that way), and Teaching, which is a far less formal party of the education process.
Education, as is so often stated, is a leading out, not a putting in, Education is something you do to yourself, with assistance from a good teacher. As illustrations, the koans of Buddhist masters, and Matthew Arnold’s work on educational theory are worth examining – in each case exposure to a higher truth enables the student to enlighten himself….