What should universities do about systemic racism?

[maxchoboian]

3 minutes ago, Belly Bob said:

 

When you start with the premise that social justice requires that the population of an institution reflect the general population...

I was off-topic a bit, in talking more about employment than academic admissions.

What I found interesting is the process of an individual climbing the corporate ladder.

Minorities can be given opprtunities to work for companies. Then, for instance in the case of a sales organization or an accounting firm or a law firm, how an individual is initially assigned to a team or group within the organization is significantly influenced by their background ("He is from West Lafayette, the other candidate is from somewhere near Gary. Let's put the West Lafayette guy on my team" or "She went to Purdue, the other candidate went to IU-Fort Wayne. I'll take the Purdue grad" or "Bob Belly is his name, the other candidate is named Zhang Wong. Let's go with Bob Belly in our group"). The West Lafayette, Purdue, Bob Belly types are certainly more often selected for the higher profile groups/teams within organizations, which leads to considerably more exposure, and in turn creates many more opportunities for significant corporate advancement. This is what I find interesting, not neccessarily how many minorities are given entry-level positions.

[imaGoodBoyNow]

let me know when I get Free business Grants, Free College education, prevailing wages on jobs just cause someone’s skin is a lil darker than mine

[Bormio]

White people being racist vs Asians results in them being over represented in universities 

White people being racist vs African Americans causes them to be under represented in universities 

Got it

[badrouter]

40 minutes ago, Belly Bob said:

But for the reasons suggested by @maxchoboian, unless we do something now, we'll create more systemic racism, since Asians will get better jobs and accumulate a disproportionate amount of wealth and power, which will lead us to form unconscious associations in our minds about Asians--that they're intelligent and hardworking and responsible etc.--which will give them even more power etc.

That's why the Harvard Crimson famously argued that Asians are not (as they claim) being unfairly discriminated against. Harvard is doing their due diligence in fighting systemic racism, by correcting the problem of Asians' over-representation at elite American universities.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/12/1/asian-americans-are-overrepresented-at-elite/

This reads a bit like satire. How about empowering and uplifting the other groups? Why must we only bring some groups down?

[Bormio]

4 minutes ago, badrouter said:

This reads a bit like satire. How a lot empowering and uplifting the other groups? Why must we only bring some groups down?

It is good for the economy though - a bunch of jobs to count all this shit, bureaucrats to ensure compliance and then lawyers to litigate it

[Belly Bob]

8 minutes ago, badrouter said:

This reads a bit like satire. How about empowering and uplifting the other groups? Why must we only bring some groups down?

There are a limited number of seats. A spot at Harvard is a so-called competitive good. So to increase the representation of one group, you've got to decrease the representation of another group. 

[badrouter]

3 minutes ago, Belly Bob said:

There are a limited number of seats. A spot at Harvard is a so-called competitive good. So to increase the representation of one group, you've got to decrease the representation of another group. 

As long as the qualifications of the candidates are comparable, there is no problem with such an approach. But, if we’re letting in students who are obviously less qualified than those who were turned down, we’ve not done anyone any favors.

[badrouter]

About Foucault: 

 

[Belly Bob]

42 minutes ago, badrouter said:

About Foucault: 

In graduate school, I took a course on scientific realism. The professor drily remarked that since Foucault died of AIDS, we can be confident that at least one disease is really real. 

[Belly Bob]

2 hours ago, badrouter said:

As long as the qualifications of the candidates are comparable, there is no problem with such an approach. But, if we’re letting in students who are obviously less qualified than those who were turned down, we’ve not done anyone any favors.

"Equity" is replacing "equality" as the buzzword in "antiracist" admissions and hiring policies. 

The hope was that if we treated people equally by ignoring their race and gender etc, then we'd get better results with respect to representation at universities in general and within certain disciplines like STEM and analytic philosophy in particular. But that didn't pan out. And if half of all STEM majors and STEM faculty are not women, then we can be confident that our admissions and hiring policies are unjust. (People in STEM often disagree. But they do not read a lot of Foucault and are often uninterested in administrative work.)

So now many believe that we have to pay close attention to the race and gender etc. of an applicant in order that we might achieve a more equitable outcome.

Many people in the Asian American community think that the shift from an emphasis on equality to an emphasis on equity is unjust.

[Belly Bob]

3 hours ago, maxchoboian said:

I was off-topic a bit, in talking more about employment than academic admissions.

What I found interesting is the process of an individual climbing the corporate ladder.

Minorities can be given opprtunities to work for companies. Then, for instance in the case of a sales organization or an accounting firm or a law firm, how an individual is initially assigned to a team or group within the organization is significantly influenced by their background ("He is from West Lafayette, the other candidate is from somewhere near Gary. Let's put the West Lafayette guy on my team" or "She went to Purdue, the other candidate went to IU-Fort Wayne. I'll take the Purdue grad" or "Bob Belly is his name, the other candidate is named Zhang Wong. Let's go with Bob Belly in our group"). The West Lafayette, Purdue, Bob Belly types are certainly more often selected for the higher profile groups/teams within organizations, which leads to considerably more exposure, and in turn creates many more opportunities for significant corporate advancement. This is what I find interesting, not neccessarily how many minorities are given entry-level positions.

This rings true to me and is part of the reason why people push for better policies. I went to grad school with a Chinese woman -- not Chinese American but Chinese Chinese. She didn't make it to a lot of our pickup basketball games or our the beer-drinking and football-watching events, which means that she didn't participate in the hours and hours of business related conversations we had at those times.

But it's worth thinking a bit about what exactly constitutes a better policy. 

[Troll]

3 hours ago, Belly Bob said:

There are a limited number of seats. A spot at Harvard is a so-called competitive good. So to increase the representation of one group, you've got to decrease the representation of another group. 

PSSSSSSsssssssssst............

You jumped the shark...

why you segregating by color

there homie ??? 🤡

 

PS: The answer (FYI) is you cannot promote one group over another,

by skin color,

without it 👍

 

BTW: you some Nazi now ???

🤓

 

 

 

[Belly Bob]

32 minutes ago, Troll said:

BTW: you some Nazi now ???

That depends on who you ask.

I think @Nolebull813 and @concha would say that I'm libtard. And I think @Ga96 and @RedZone would say that I'm a Trumptard. 

But I like to think of myself as a Nazi and Communist, which I didn't even think was possible until I came here, since I didn't think you could be on the extreme right and the extreme left at the same time.

[15yds4gibberish]

20 hours ago, Belly Bob said:

Belly is participating in a summer reading group. Here's an article we're currently reading. I thought some here might find it interesting.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/06/09/defeat-systemic-racism-institutions-must-fully-integrate-truly-diverse-subject

Warren thinks that the changes we've made in our hiring and admissions policies are a good start, and she likes that colleges offer "awareness-raising" courses and even make some such courses mandatory. But she thinks we can and ought to do much more.

We need more mandatory classes that "discuss the various intersections of oppression." And we need to restructure the way our money is allocated. We can't just give it to popular professors or courses or departments. We want to make sure money goes to departments and professors who teach Foucault and his ilk. 

The comments are worth reading. Foucault is anathema in analytic philosophy departments. I find it ironic that the "philosophers" who have been rejected by philosophy departments have become the leading lights in social studies departments and humanities departments outside philosophy. 

Complicated topic that requires nuance and context which is in short supply here in the backwater of the high school football blog.

Some tentative assumptions/thoughts/questions (reserve the right to change my mind because I’m still trying to learn):

1)      There are something like 5000 colleges and universities in the US.   Based on the word 'university' in the thread title and that the only school mentioned so far in the thread is Harvard, I assume we are talking about Ivy and other ‘academically elite’ institutions.  

2)      What is the mission/purpose of a university?  Is there more than one?  If so, what are they, and in what priority?  The answer to these questions will likely change the response to pretty much any ‘what should universities do’ type question. 

3)      Not exactly sure whether I believe in the ideal of the “free marketplace of ideas” anymore (especially not in the backwaters of the HS football blog), but if there is anyplace with the academic tools and rigor to withstand the challenges to it, I have to believe it would be Ivy and other ‘academically elite’ university campuses. 

4)      It strikes me that the argument of structural bias and exclusion is a response to the claim of meritocracy.  If number 3 above is true, it’s both worthwhile and more than fair to interrogate meritocracy.  Where meritocracy is valid, it will withstand the scrutiny.  Where it isn't, it won't. 

5)       About the Article: It strikes me as not practical to include systemic discrimination in all courses – Not exactly sure how it would fit into, say, an engineering course or one on the Critique of Pure Reason.  But that doesn’t mean it can’t be included in more courses. 

6)      It also strikes me that there’s an important difference between some of Warren’s suggestions for inclusion of systemic exclusion type ideas (“intellectually representative, including diverse experiences”), and her seeming suggestion for the exclusion of other ideas  (“limit remaining electives”).  I’d like to know more specifics of what she means before reacting with too strong an opinion.

7)      A number of IVY and ‘academically elite’ colleges and universities, like Dartmouth, already have mandatory implicit bias training for all students, faculty and staff.  The number of applicants to Dartmouth continues to well outstrip the supply of admissions, and the tuition price tag remains high.  They don’t appear to be suffering in ‘the college marketplace’ for having the requirement. 

[Belly Bob]

On 6/18/2021 at 5:41 PM, 15yds4gibberish said:

6)      It also strikes me that there’s an important difference between some of Warren’s suggestions for inclusion of systemic exclusion type ideas (“intellectually representative, including diverse experiences”), and her seeming suggestion for the exclusion of other ideas  (“limit remaining electives”).  I’d like to know more specifics of what she means before reacting with too strong an opinion.

7)      A number of IVY and ‘academically elite’ colleges and universities, like Dartmouth, already have mandatory implicit bias training for all students, faculty and staff.  The number of applicants to Dartmouth continues to well outstrip the supply of admissions, and the tuition price tag remains high.  They don’t appear to be suffering in ‘the college marketplace’ for having the requirement. 

I have to run, but I wanted to fire off a quick response before I do.

6) strikes me as important, since I rarely hear advocates for greater campus diversity advocate a greater diversity of ideas.  I cannot remember anyone arguing that we need to hire more conservatives.

7) strikes me as important for a number of reasons. First, it's not at all clear that implicit bias training works. 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/making-people-aware-of-their-implicit-biases-doesnt-usually-change-minds-but-heres-what-does-work

Second, it's not clear to me how the goal of implicit bias training accords with the goal of increasing diversity, since there are fairly obvious ways in which we could limit or even eliminate the influence of implicit bias but which wouldn't satisfy the advocates for greater diversity and inclusion. Correcting for implicit bias often doesn't get the desired result.

I once suggested to a colleague that we eliminate all personal information from CVs so that our racial and gender biases would not affect which finalists we invited to campus. She replied that that wouldn't work, because white men would have better CVs on average, owing to their greater privilege.

[Troll]

2 hours ago, Belly Bob said:

I once suggested to a colleague that we eliminate all personal information from CVs so that our racial and gender biases would not affect which finalists we invite to campus. She replied that that wouldn't work, because white men would have better CVs on average, owing to their greater privilege.

Perhaps you should have reminded her

that judging merit...

...has nothing to do

with any type of "privilege"....

DUH 🤓

 

PS: Unless of course you consider the ONLY individual "privilege" involved,

when it comes to learning abilities...

...you do know what that is right???

 

 

 

🧠🧠🧠

 

BTW: This conversation must be where you accepted or agreed with Nazi-ism ??? 🤔

 

 

 

[Troll]

6 hours ago, badrouter said:

This reads a bit like satire.

it is satire...🤣

6 hours ago, badrouter said:

 How about empowering and uplifting the other groups? Why must we only bring some groups down?

Because THAT is the only purpose for pigeon holing individuals...

...into "groups". 👍

Goes hand in hand with artificially inflating other "pigeonholed groups". 👌

Can't have one without the other...🤷‍♂️

 

...and you Can't have Either without "racist pigeon holing"

 

 

PS: Your  problem is not your skin color....

...your problem is that there is always some asshole,

you know...

....trying to "group you by it" 🤓

 

go figure...

 

 

[Troll]

4 hours ago, Belly Bob said:

"Equity"  "leveling distribution (by racially group profiling)"  is replacing INDIVIDUAL "equality" as the buzzwords in "antiracist" admissions and hiring policies.

FIFY 👍

SACRIFICING Individual "Equality" is totally required...

you know

...for any "GROUP" think. 👌

 

PS: Check your  🧠🧠🧠

at the "group think"

door...

🚪

 

 

 

PS:  Guess we just can't envision people as individuals anymore... 🙄

 

[BUFORDGAWOLVES]

8 hours ago, imaGoodBoyNow said:

let me know when I get Free business Grants, Free College education, prevailing wages on jobs just cause someone’s skin is a lil darker than mine

Definitely White Privilege definition….

You’re sweating the perceived lack of opportunity and looking out the window.

Fuck that “loser” attitude, get a mentor, join Toastmasters, get your GC….. keep moving. 
 

bgw

[Troll]

16 hours ago, Belly Bob said:

In graduate school, I took a course on scientific realism. The professor drily remarked that since Foucault died of AIDS, we can be confident that at least one disease is really real. 

Yes but can you be 'confident'

that AIDS was not lab created (intentional or not),

and set free

thru the small pox vaccine ???

🤔

 

PS: really real, means really real ...

[Troll]

11 hours ago, BUFORDGAWOLVES said:

Definitely White Privilege definition….

 

 

I thought the definition was...

You endorsing specific attributes as being "white" in skin tone,

and attacking that "projected privilege"

because that is some "perceived perspective advantage" ....you know

that you lack...

 

Oh wait... That is the definition of...

12 hours ago, BUFORDGAWOLVES said:

 that “loser” attitude…..

bgw

  👍

[Belly Bob]

On 6/18/2021 at 5:41 PM, 15yds4gibberish said:

Complicated topic that requires nuance and context which is in short supply here in the backwater of the high school football blog.

Some tentative assumptions/thoughts/questions (reserve the right to change my mind because I’m still trying to learn):

1)      There are something like 5000 colleges and universities in the US.   Based on the word 'university' in the thread title and that the only school mentioned so far in the thread is Harvard, I assume we are talking about Ivy and other ‘academically elite’ institutions.  

2)      What is the mission/purpose of a university?  Is there more than one?  If so, what are they, and in what priority?  The answer to these questions will likely change the response to pretty much any ‘what should universities do’ type question. 

3)      Not exactly sure whether I believe in the ideal of the “free marketplace of ideas” anymore (especially not in the backwaters of the HS football blog), but if there is anyplace with the academic tools and rigor to withstand the challenges to it, I have to believe it would be Ivy and other ‘academically elite’ university campuses. 

4)      It strikes me that the argument of structural bias and exclusion is a response to the claim of meritocracy.  If number 3 above is true, it’s both worthwhile and more than fair to interrogate meritocracy.  Where meritocracy is valid, it will withstand the scrutiny.  Where it isn't, it won't. 

5)       About the Article: It strikes me as not practical to include systemic discrimination in all courses – Not exactly sure how it would fit into, say, an engineering course or one on the Critique of Pure Reason.  But that doesn’t mean it can’t be included in more courses. 

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I do appreciate it. Here are some quick remarks, which might not be as thoughtful as I'd like. (My wife and I had too much fun in Indy last night. We made a great effort to rejuvenate the city, which had tough year.) But maybe you won't hold that against me, since we are in the backwaters of the HS football blog.

1) I'm thinking about all colleges.

2) Though I have ideas about this and I think it's the right approach--I like to think of myself as an Aristotelian--I think it would take us too far afield. The author of the article appears to think that at least one of the academy's purposes is to correct systemic racism, and not just in the academy, but in America. That's how I understand her lament about social media. Her point seems to be that the antiracism movement is losing ground because of social media, so we have to hit students harder while we've got them.

3) and (4) I'm not sure I get your point if I get your point (if that makes sense). Presumably you don't mean to say, "I don't know what universities should do about systemic racism because they haven't told me yet." I agree that they're a talented bunch and they're working it out. But it's not yet worked out, and there's no guarantee that they'll get it right.

One criticism that antiracists often make is that the academy isn't nearly as interested in antiracism as they pretend to be, which I think is fair, precisely because many within the academy do not accept the author's preferred "discourse on privilege and systemic discrimination" or "the dominant narrative that racism [is] the key determinant in all matters related to equality and justice," which I think comes out pretty clearly in the comment section. This relates to (2). Criticizing these views has become a cottage industry on social media, whose consumers are college students. Moreover, professors in recent years have become public figures, widely followed on social media, for criticizing views like these.

5) I agree, but many antiracists don't. I took a diversity and inclusion training course. I learned about the "stereotype cycle." Society teaches girls and people of color that they're not good at math and science, by their being underrepresented in those fields, which makes them bad at math and science, which makes them underrepresented in those fields. So math and science departments have to fight against this vicious cycle, which is part of systemic racism, by hiring more women and people of color and by "contextualizing" the history of these subjects, which happens to be dominated by white men. The very history of math and science is "problematic" for being unfortunately exclusive.

If you're teaching the Critique of Pure Reason and you say here's how Kant responded to Hume and here's how Kant's view is different from Berkeley's and this is Schopenhauer's main objection, your students might think, "These are all white men," which could lead to a vicious stereotype cycle that perpetuates systemic racism. So if you're an antiracist, you'll want to build something into the course which prevents that sort of thing.

[15yds4gibberish]

On 6/18/2021 at 3:04 PM, Belly Bob said:

I have to run, but I wanted to fire off a quick response before I do...

Thanks for the reply BB.  A few quick thoughts, attempts at clarification, in return (standard caveat about reserving the right to change my mind applies):

On 6/18/2021 at 3:04 PM, Belly Bob said:

6) strikes me as important, since I rarely hear advocates for greater campus diversity advocate a greater diversity of ideas.  I cannot remember anyone arguing that we need to hire more conservatives....

I’ve seen the claim posted elsewhere in these here backwaters, unironically, that academia is a place that systemically excludes conservatives and conservative ideas.  I’m not on campus so I don’t know who’s saying what about hiring who. But looking in as an outsider, I’d suggest in the last half century many conservative ideas have flourished just fine on campus, and they are transforming the world.  Consider a trip to your local university chapter of the Federalist Society, or ponder how markets and market values have expanded into every discipline, even where they don’t belong. 

 

On 6/18/2021 at 3:04 PM, Belly Bob said:

First, it's not at all clear that implicit bias training works. 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/making-people-aware-of-their-implicit-biases-doesnt-usually-change-minds-but-heres-what-does-work

My comments weren’t intended to speak to the veracity of bias training, just that it's already happening on some campuses and they remain desirable destinations.  I don’t know what Dartmouth actually does with their requirement.  But I did read Thinking Fast and Slow a number of years ago (while staying in a Holiday Inn Express  ), which the article you linked reminded me of.

 

On 6/18/2021 at 3:04 PM, Belly Bob said:

...Second, it's not clear to me how the goal of implicit bias training accords with the goal of increasing diversity, since there are fairly obvious ways in which we could limit or even eliminate the influence of implicit bias but which wouldn't satisfy the advocates for greater diversity and inclusion. Correcting for implicit bias often doesn't get the desired result...

While admissions and what college's teach the admitted are two separate levers to pull in support of a mission, we've kinda been talking about both.  An example of  admission policy that didn’t necessarily get the desired result might be Harvard.  Harvard introduced the SAT in the attempt to transform itself into a meritocratic institution as part of a broader ambition to remake American society on meritocratic principles (“Education for a Classless Society”).  The SAT was born of the promise to admit students based on academic merit rather than class and family pedigree.  Today meritocracy has hardened into a hereditary aristocracy.  Two thirds of the students at Harvard come from the top fifth of the income scale.

 

On 6/18/2021 at 3:04 PM, Belly Bob said:

...I once suggested to a colleague that we eliminate all personal information from CVs so that our racial and gender biases would not affect which finalists we invited to campus. She replied that that wouldn't work, because white men would have better CVs on average, owing to their greater privilege.

 

I've read about similar reform suggestions for Harvard admissions  -- Make it a lottery of the qualified.  

Every year 40,000+ students apply for roughly 2000 spaces.  Admissions officers tell us that a great many of those who apply are qualified to do the work and do it well.  So winnow out the ones obviously not qualified, and toss the remaining 30,000 (or 25,000 or 20,000) down the stairs and pick up a random 2,000 for admission.

The proposal doesn't ignore merit altogether, only the qualified are admitted.  But it treats merit as a threshold qualification, not an ideal to be maximized.

As you can imagine there are arguments as to why that wouldn't work -- Many of which I don't find terribly compelling either.

[Belly Bob]

17 hours ago, 15yds4gibberish said:

Thanks for the reply BB.  A few quick thoughts, attempts at clarification, in return (standard caveat about reserving the right to change my mind applies):

I want to reserve the same right. And I'll add that Will Durant (I think) used to say something like "if a man rarely changes his mind, you can be pretty confident that he's not much of a thinker." 

17 hours ago, 15yds4gibberish said:

I’ve seen the claim posted elsewhere in these here backwaters, unironically, that academia is a place that systemically excludes conservatives and conservative ideas.  I’m not on campus so I don’t know who’s saying what about hiring who. But looking in as an outsider, I’d suggest in the last half century many conservative ideas have flourished just fine on campus, and they are transforming the world.  Consider a trip to your local university chapter of the Federalist Society, or ponder how markets and market values have expanded into every discipline, even where they don’t belong. 

I didn't mean to suggest that conservatives and conservative ideas are systemically excluded from campus. Mitch Daniels is the big boss at Purdue. My point was that those who push for greater diversity are focused on race and gender and not ideas. The author of the article, as I read her, wants colleges to make certain ideas which are popular in certain social science and humanities departments mandatory reading for students, ideas which are almost universally rejected by people in other departments.

17 hours ago, 15yds4gibberish said:

While admissions and what college's teach the admitted are two separate levers to pull in support of a mission, we've kinda been talking about both.  An example of  admission policy that didn’t necessarily get the desired result might be Harvard.  Harvard introduced the SAT in the attempt to transform itself into a meritocratic institution as part of a broader ambition to remake American society on meritocratic principles (“Education for a Classless Society”).  The SAT was born of the promise to admit students based on academic merit rather than class and family pedigree.  Today meritocracy has hardened into a hereditary aristocracy.  Two thirds of the students at Harvard come from the top fifth of the income scale.

I think I get your point: Harvard continues to admit rich kids. But I'm puzzled by what "academic merit" means here. Is it implausible that the wealthiest twenty percent of Americans would have about two thirds of it? Is there a reason to think that Asian Americans can't have 25 percent of whatever constitutes academic merit if they're only 5 percent of the US population? 

17 hours ago, 15yds4gibberish said:

I've read about similar reform suggestions for Harvard admissions  -- Make it a lottery of the qualified.  

Every year 40,000+ students apply for roughly 2000 spaces.  Admissions officers tell us that a great many of those who apply are qualified to do the work and do it well.  So winnow out the ones obviously not qualified, and toss the remaining 30,000 (or 25,000 or 20,000) down the stairs and pick up a random 2,000 for admission.

The proposal doesn't ignore merit altogether, only the qualified are admitted.  But it treats merit as a threshold qualification, not an ideal to be maximized.

As you can imagine there are arguments as to why that wouldn't work -- Many of which I don't find terribly compelling either.

I don't think this would work -- or work very well -- either. But would it fail to work because it was racist? That would be a bit of a surprise.

If our system is racist (in part) because those making admissions and hiring decision are influenced by their implicit biases, then you'd think we'd make the system less racist if we eliminated the information that might trigger those biases. The revised system might be worse for other reasons, but it would come as a bit of a surprise to me if it was worse for being more racist. 

[RedZone]

On 6/17/2021 at 8:33 PM, Belly Bob said:

Belly is participating in a summer reading group.

You should read more in the winter...