Students are running this initiative where they match an international student with an American one so that they could do a language exchange, hang out, share knowledge about their cultures, etc.
Neither our Diversity Office nor our International Student Affairs are giving a dime towards this initiative. They don’t even offer $10 a month for a pizza or whatever.
This initiative does a lot more to promote diversity than all of their dumb leaflets and idiotic diversity statements. But they don’t care. Because they only exist to make the very idea of diversity annoying to everybody.
Clarissa's Blog 
The “amateur bureaucrat” is probably the worst concept ever invented. That’s a person who, having proven ineptitude in their chosen pursuit (say, teaching or research) then decides to do something different without any training and via a selection process run by other amateur bureaucrats.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
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Yes, precisely. The results are always pathetic.
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International students aren’t considered diverse because “diversity” isn’t actually about the literal meaning of the word. It is a rationale that passes legal muster, but the actual goal of diversity bureaucrats is to provide remedial justice for inequities in the US. International students are, by definition, not from disadvantaged US groups. And they are stereotyped (not entirely inaccurately) as not being disadvantaged because they can afford out of state tuition. So international students don’t enable anyone to salve their consciences.
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I also have several stories of how the policies that could help African American students not to be squeezed out of STEM fields are being casually dropped. So it’s not like these bureaucrats are being so great for domestic minorities.
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I would love to hear these stories. Remember that the other job of the diversity bureaucracy is to make sure that the problems are addressed (in a well-photographed manner) but not actually solved. Solutions would threaten their jobs.
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So true.
Here’s the deal with African American students. They enter STEM programs in very decent numbers. But they don’t graduate from these programs. After 1 – 2 years, they either drop out or switch to different programs. Faculty members tell me that there are two things that are guaranteed to have a great positive effect:
Students need to spend one-on-one time with the professor.
Peer teaching.
The moment we report these findings, course caps in precisely these crucial intro courses (Calc 1, Bio 1, Intro to College Chem, etc) are raised from 25 to 60! And the peer teaching loses funding. Instead, we are going to have a course that teaches students about the importance of diversity and workshops on how to make black students feel more welcome. When one points out that not flunking out of College Math 1 will make them feel more welcome, people make faces at me.
Another thing I’m told is that black students are doomed to flunk out because we don’t have an African American professor to teach these courses. But that’s not true! Evidence shows that individualized attention from ANY professor helps. But when I say that, diversity folks hear it as me saying that I oppose hiring African American professors. Which is every kind of insane.
Sorry for the rant but this is a pet peeve of mine.
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“But when I say that, diversity folks hear it as me saying that I oppose hiring African American professors. Which is every kind of insane.”
Hence I go anon for these topics.
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I know how you feel! It’s like they make me out to be some sort of a racist when I point out that the reason we are not hiring African American professors is that none have applied. As if this weren’t a statement of fact on my part.
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I know how you feel! It’s like they make me out to be some sort of a racist when I point out that the reason we are not hiring African American professors is that none have applied
If nobody applies, they have to take a good hard look at the department, the university to figure out why that is. AFAIK, academia really isn’t for people who are picky about locales. And from what you’ve said about some of hiring interviews for department staff, I can only guess.
Students need to spend one-on-one time with the professor.
Peer teaching
IOW, hire more professors & have more tutoring. I’m not sure the university is interested in changing those classes (The moment we report these findings, course caps in precisely these crucial intro courses (Calc 1, Bio 1, Intro to College Chem, etc) from weed-out classes to classes that a lot of people do well in.
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The problem is this: if no African American students graduate from a Statistics program, there’s nobody to go to grad school and become a professor. We have to start changing things from very early in their careers so that they don’t leave the programs. And it’s doable! A very little effort really helps. And if we are not making this effort, then we suck.
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Putting this together with your Roth post where you write: “Now that we have shed our oppressive, restrictive familial and cultural bonds, has fluidity given us anything in return?”
Well the general human tendency is to recreate through impersonal bureaucracy or consumerism those things that are no longer produced organically (not exactly the right word but close enough for government work).
So, we have things like social security to provide for the aged since their families no longer want to and things like consumerist daycare since most adults of childbearing age no longer have (or want?) a web of extended family that can pool childcare.
Diversity bureaucrats are a new and imperfect way (still being worked out) of providing a simulacrum of cultural continuity since many people can’t or don’t want to do the work of actually living in a distinct cultural community but who still want or need the boost of a a clear, non-negotiable identity*. They do the work of the former communities in constantly reinforcing separate oppositional identities. As a new field the protocols are still being worked out and are maybe responsive to positive engagement…
*Identity is at the root of sentience and human consciousness (being able to place yourself in relation to other people and peoples). It can be a drag when overdone but without it there is only the void….
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Added to previous post: Oh, and job creation of course.
People have collectively decided/realized that the old economy of making physical things and selling them to each other is kind of over (since machines do a better, cheaper job of making things). They’ve also realized that everybody selling sophisticated financial instruments to each other is also nothing to base an economy on.
Now, we’re headed for economy primarily based on people providing services for each other (IINM both you and your sister are working in it). Supplementing the information economy (N is in?) since the powers that be decided/realized that selling information to each other is too….. niche for mass employment.
Governments are slowly retooling to become mass employers since the factories and banking sector are over. Diversiteers are hardly the most intrusive or absurd of these kinds of jobs.
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If an arrangement could be created that these folks sit quietly in the offices and we all understand that they are getting paid simply because there’s no other use for them, then OK, whatever. But it’s like we are all paying this weird game when we give a toddler a plastic plate and a towel to convince him that he’s helping and prevent him from crying. The cost of keeping up the illusion that all these folks are doing something important is getting too high.
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My observation from what happens at my university: the purpose of the office of diversity is not diversity, but promotion. The administrators do not really care about diversity, but would like people to believe that they do. Hence the office, the sole purpose of whose existence is to generally make lots of loud noises about diversity, but not do anything of consequence.
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My observation from what happens at my university: the purpose of the office of diversity is not diversity, but promotion. The administrators do not really care about diversity, but would like people to believe that they do. Hence the office, the sole purpose of whose existence is to generally make lots of loud noises about diversity, but not do anything of consequence.
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“The moment we report these findings, course caps in precisely these crucial intro courses (Calc 1, Bio 1, Intro to College Chem, etc) are raised from 25 to 60! And the peer teaching loses funding.”
Of course. Too many people have too much of a vested interest in continued Black failure (all across the political spectrum, for different reasons).
Finding something that is helpful for Black students (at any level) is the surest way for that thing to be phased out of existance with all possible speed.
Meanwhile, failed programs are continued endlessly and have no problem getting funding…
My basic premise is that most things work the way they’re supposed to work most of the time. If they don’t then they’re changed. Any continuing dysfunction is continuing because people want it to.
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That’s what it seems like to me, too.
But hey, the Diversity Office has organized a BLM conference. I am so going because I know I’ll be vastly entertained. I’ll also ask a few questions, just to make them sweat.
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