Does it, though? Because the two suggestions it offers are 1) Pass the buck to K12 ("But the inequalities arise long before high school, and they won’t disappear in college until we close the gaps in the entire K-12 system") 2) Don't change a thing until it's been proven to work ("Because the current evidence about diversity programs is so inconclusive, universities and their social-science faculties also should take the lead in designing experiments—true experiments, with control conditions and random assignment of students—to evaluate existing efforts and proposed new ones. Given the frequency with which well-intentioned programs backfire, no program should be implemented widely until it has first been rigorously tested") Which, really, says "this whole integration experiment has failed, back to the clubhouse, boys." Wait - you mean back when James Meredith needed US Marshals to escort him to class because of the riots? Oops. That was '62. So 54 years. Funny thing, though - we're a month out from the 50th anniversary of him getting shot for going to college. Air Force veteran, by the way. Nine years. Served in Korea. That half century? The "hard truth" about race on campus is that inequality is uncomfortable to confront and painful to change. I'm no fan of the term "microaggressions" either but I also know that even though "the policies and programs that universities have pursued over the past half-century don’t seem to be working", the world is my oyster so I should maybe STFU a little bit. 'cuz you know what? 40 years ago, these women at West Point raised their fists in support of African American empowerment and were investigated for violating Army rules. Oops. Not 40 years ago. LAST WEEK. Silly me. 40 years ago West Point had just started letting in women. Those ladies above? They represent 16 of 17 black female graduates out of a class of 1000 this year. Presume the article is correct - our policies "don't seem to be working." Based on the photo, and what led up to it, should we give up? Or try harder?some good suggestions on better ways to go about dealing this the problem.
The policies and programs that universities have pursued over the past half-century don’t seem to be working, at least as judged by the recent campus unrest, so reflexively expanding them probably isn’t the answer.
I'm a bit more optimistic on the article. I see it less as "we're failing, so let's start over" and more as "we need to step back and look at the successes and failures so we can continue and enhance the things that work." I see the article as saying some things to work and some not only don't work but make it worse. We can do better by understanding this, and like you said, try harder.
mmmmyeah, not so sure. http://heterodoxacademy.org/about-us/ It's not that they don't support diversity or affirmative action... it's that they think it ought to be applied to conservative white professors. Which does nothing to validate or invalidate their position. BUT they legitimately present zero real-world solutions other than "stop." I mean... This is a couple academics saying that colleges, which charge tuition, should emulate the changes made by a military force in the wake of the end of the draft. Where you can be thrown in prison for breaking the rules, rather than expelled. Where the money goes the other way, which is what primarily drives enlistment amongst the poor, as opposed to college, where its mostly the rich. The thing detractors love to miss in these discussions is that affirmative action is designed to change demographics for the next generation. You want to make it easier for the disadvantaged to get in so that by the time their kids are ready, they're no longer disadvantaged. We're four generations from this: Now is not the time to wring our hands and decry our failures.Dr. Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Dr. Jussim is a professor and a former chair of the department of psychology at Rutgers University. They are founding members of HeterodoxAcademy.org.
In their book “All That We Can Be” (1996), the sociologists Charles Moskos and John Sibley Butler describe how the U.S. Army escaped from the racial dysfunction of the 1970s to become a model of integration and near-equality by the time of the 1991 Gulf War.
Universities should consider a similar approach. Race would become less powerful as a social cue if schools shifted their attention away from the raw numbers of students in each category and focused instead on eliminating the gaps between the races, as the Army did.
I made that long post yesterday about this exact thing (and might roll it into something else to be posted on here), and this is exactly right. There are few things currently more irritating to me than the attitude that since something isn't immediately effective it's not worth doing. Incrementalism is a thing, and making the daily small changes and call-outs culturally, economically, environmentally, etc. while coupling those acts with larger acts of experimentation, social protest and dissent, is how change is made. To say "stop - this isn't working right now so it's not worth doing / we need to blow this up and completely alter this from scratch" is completely asinine most of the time. But, you know, we live in this now now now world so what the fuck do I know, but at least I can admit to the privilege of being a white male and don't take for granted the fact that we're even having these more nuanced conversations about race, education, and economics. ...guess this article was more frustrating to me than I thought...The thing detractors love to miss in these discussions is that affirmative action is designed to change demographics for the next generation.
"It's not that they don't support diversity or affirmative action... it's that they think it ought to be applied to conservative white professors." I don't really follow. What about their "about" page suggests this? They even have a link to a post on this topic on that page, which I don't see a problem with: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2016/02/24/krugman-is-wrong-we-are-not-conservative/
"Professors moved left since 1990s, the rest of the country did not" "Why are liberals so condescending?" "It may be harder than we thought, but political diversity will (still) improve social psychological science" "Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University" "Liberal privilege in academia" Did you miss all of those?I don't really follow. What about their "about" page suggests this?
This comment is in two parts. The first presents some implications of Inbar and Lammers’ (2012, this issue) findings by making salient many of the advantages and privileges enjoyed by scientists when they extol the moral and intellectual superiority of liberals, liberal beliefs, liberal attitudes, and liberal policy preferences over conservatives, conservative beliefs, conservative attitudes, and conservative policy preferences. The second part of this comment refutes (or, at least, vigorously contests) some of the most common arguments that have attempted to defend social psychology from charges of unscientific and distorting liberal biases.
I mean, I saw titles of individual publications by these individuals and they obviously do think it should be applied to conservative professors, but I don't see anything about race and it seemed like you were implying they believed it should be applied to conservative white professors to the exclusion of any other group in any other context (which I'm still not getting). I haven't had time to go through and familiarize myself with these people or their general dispositions, outlooks, and beliefs, maybe that's the problem.