Why Do Universities Want a Diverse Student Body?

[Loren Pechtel]

Affirmative action is extremely racist and may have had a place 40 years ago as a cure for other racism.

No, racism is an attempt to hold back a particular race. AA was never put forth to hold back or marginalize white people. You'll need another word to describe it.

That's the leftist fantasy definition.

The real world definition is making decisions based on race rather than meaningful factors.

 

[laughing dog]

Affirmative action is extremely racist and may have had a place 40 years ago as a cure for other racism.

No, racism is an attempt to hold back a particular race. AA was never put forth to hold back or marginalize white people. You'll need another word to describe it.

That's the leftist fantasy definition.

The real world definition is making decisions based on race rather than meaningful factors.

That is pure projection.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Affirmative action is extremely racist and may have had a place 40 years ago as a cure for other racism.

No, racism is an attempt to hold back a particular race. AA was never put forth to hold back or marginalize white people. You'll need another word to describe it.

That's the leftist fantasy definition.

The real world definition is making decisions based on race rather than meaningful factors.

That is flat out false.

 

[TV and credit cards]

While diversity is important, it is also important to know how Americanized those in the group are. Regardless of their cultural background, if the students are generations removed from their cultural heritage, then the only difference is varying degrees of wealth and poverty. While there may be some benefit in this, it is not the wellspring of diversity a university might hope for.
If the student, parents and grandparents were all born and lived in, say a suburb of Philadelphia, what difference does it make what wrapper they came in?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Affirmative action is extremely racist and may have had a place 40 years ago as a cure for other racism.

No, racism is an attempt to hold back a particular race. AA was never put forth to hold back or marginalize white people. You'll need another word to describe it.

That's the leftist fantasy definition.

The real world definition is making decisions based on race rather than meaningful factors.

That is pure projection.

How is that projection? You're just avoiding addressing the obvious.

 

[laughing dog]

Affirmative action is extremely racist and may have had a place 40 years ago as a cure for other racism.

No, racism is an attempt to hold back a particular race. AA was never put forth to hold back or marginalize white people. You'll need another word to describe it.

That's the leftist fantasy definition.

The real world definition is making decisions based on race rather than meaningful factors.

That is pure projection.

How is that projection? You're just avoiding addressing the obvious.

It is projection because as is not about making decisions based on race - that is how you believe to occur because you cannot imagine it functioning any other way.

BTW - your failure to grasp the point of a response does not make that a response an evasion or failure to address whatever you feel is the point or a derail.

 

[Toni]

I am not opening a discussion about whether they should want diversity for moral reasons,

I am opening a discussion about why they **DO** want diversity. How do they make money from it, since it is likely all about money, in the end. Or if you think it's not, what do you think it is? Because they clearly want diversity. Many universities work very hard to get it.

So why do universities chase diversity?

More highly paying students?
Better name recognition for having alums in more communities?
Better endowments from the wealthy?
Better financial support from business and industry who are looking for a more diverse workforce?
More favorable press that results in better fundraising because donors feel better?
Improved innovation and hence grant success in research?
More exciting college experience to make future students want to apply?


What are your thoughts and what would evidence look like to support your hypothesis?

Just my own opinion. Most of the people who manage universities are thinkers and not doers. Most have never worked manual labor less alone produced real value yet honestly want the world to present itself in their perfect mind view of what heaven looks like. They are the text book example of narcissistic self absorbed individuals.

So it has nothing to do with profit and everything to do with their religion.

Really? That’s not my experience at all. Granted, I’ve been married to an academic fir most of my life and fairly often hang out with academics. Not only do a lot of academics get pretty dirty doing their actual job but many others have side gigs doing manual labor and many more put themselves through school doing manual labor.

The thing that I value above all else except for family and friends is my education, something you see as having no real value.

Perhaps in your case your education was a waste.

 

[Elixir]

Perhaps in your case your education was a waste.

Education is NEVER a waste. Take it from someone who has had to educate themself on that particular matter.

 

[Toni]

Perhaps in your case your education was a waste.

Education is NEVER a waste. Take it from someone who has had to educate themself on that particular matter.

I was coming back to edit that comment wgmhuch, upon very brief consideration, I realized was sharper than intended.

Perhaps Rvonse considers his education a poor investment or a waste but it is hard to see how this is ever the case.

 

[bilby]

Most of the people who manage universities are thinkers and not doers. Most have never worked manual labor less alone produced real value yet honestly want the world to present itself in their perfect mind view of what heaven looks like. They are the text book example of narcissistic self absorbed individuals.

This is arrant nonsense. Thinking is an essential precursor to doing, whether you're a professor or an automobile assembly line worker.

The reason that automobile can be built at all; Indeed, the reason why the assembly line exists and the reason why the fact building doesn't blow down in a strong wind, is that those thinkers worked out how to build those things.

Thinking is hard work, and it takes years to become proficient at it, even if you start out with a good aptitude for the work. Just like welding, or plumbing, or driving a backhoe.

Literally anything more advanced than wandering naked in the wilderness is the consequence of thinking.

Most of the easy thinking has been done; Today, thinking up genuinely new thoughts is really, really hard. And generally under appreciated. But it remains absolutely essential, if we want to have nice things.

 

[Bomb#20]

Most of the easy thinking has been done; Today, thinking up genuinely new thoughts is really, really hard. And generally under appreciated. But it remains absolutely essential, if we want to have nice things.

Thinking up genuinely new thoughts is getting easier and easier as the installed base of intellectual infrastructure supporting the think-up-new-thoughts process steadily gets bigger, more refined, and more widely distributed. One of my patents is coinvented with a Ghanaian. Like an American and a Ghanaian could have come up with it in 1883. Like they could even have been talking electrical engineering to each other in 1883.

 

[bilby]

Most of the easy thinking has been done; Today, thinking up genuinely new thoughts is really, really hard. And generally under appreciated. But it remains absolutely essential, if we want to have nice things.

Thinking up genuinely new thoughts is getting easier and easier as the installed base of intellectual infrastructure supporting the think-up-new-thoughts process steadily gets bigger, more refined, and more widely distributed. One of my patents is coinvented with a Ghanaian. Like an American and a Ghanaian could have come up with it in 1883. Like they could even have been talking electrical engineering to each other in 1883.

I think we are using different meanings of "easy" and "hard".

It's to be expected that even ideas which are hard to come up with will come up more often when more people are able to collaborate on them. How does a graph of worldwide patents per capita look?

For an individual to come up with something completely new, requires first that they learn what everyone else has come up with, so that they aren't re-inventing something that is already out there. That educational burden alone is non-trivial (and is yet another vital service provided by universities).

 

[Bomb#20]

assuming educational facilities' goals are related to providing quality education, a diverse student body promotes diverse discussion. A classroom is not a one-way lecture most of the time... There are peer influences. Questions and comments inspired from differing cultures broadens the educational experience, and rounds graduates' overall knowledge and experience.

Beautiful theory. Same people who discriminate against conservatives in tenure decisions and instantly knuckle under to student cancel culture. Universities these days typically give the appearance of valuing diversity in everything that doesn't affect diverse discussion and in nothing that does.

Does it now?

Please elaborate... specifically.

New Report: The Push Against Campus Speakers Is Getting More Intense

www.thefire.org

'Disinvitations' for college speakers are on the rise — here's a list of people turned away this year

Student activism has long been ingrained in college culture, but protests about perceived discrimination over the past year have been especially tense.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You are complaining about "conservative" speakers and not the generalized day in and day out activities at a campus?

Also you have nothing to justify the "Same people who discriminate against conservatives in tenure decisions..."? That was kind of the broad and more judgmental portion of your post... most presumptive as well. Care to back that up, or are you just upset that sometimes controversial people who are selling a less than intellectual argument are not speaking at campuses... and you hoped we wouldn't notice the jibe expecting us to accept that conservatives are discriminated in tenure decisions on campuses?

This isn't to say internal politics aren't involved in tenure decisions, but actual politics?

 

[laughing dog]

assuming educational facilities' goals are related to providing quality education, a diverse student body promotes diverse discussion. A classroom is not a one-way lecture most of the time... There are peer influences. Questions and comments inspired from differing cultures broadens the educational experience, and rounds graduates' overall knowledge and experience.

Beautiful theory. Same people who discriminate against conservatives in tenure decisions and instantly knuckle under to student cancel culture. Universities these days typically give the appearance of valuing diversity in everything that doesn't affect diverse discussion and in nothing that does.

Does it now?

Please elaborate... specifically.

New Report: The Push Against Campus Speakers Is Getting More Intense

www.thefire.org

'Disinvitations' for college speakers are on the rise — here's a list of people turned away this year

Student activism has long been ingrained in college culture, but protests about perceived discrimination over the past year have been especially tense.

www.businessinsider.com

I cannot speak for every university, but I do know that current enrollment trends make upper-level administrators much more amenable to "servicing" the needs of their "customers".

While I applaud FIRE's dedication to free expression, they tend to be rather overly alarmist. Their site highlights the instances they consider violations of free expression but it is utterly silent on the instances where free expression is routine or protected.

I wonder if the number of disinvitations or denials is really rising if one included instances where speakers were simply not considered because of their views and whether the ratio of "violations of free expression" to "expression" has changed much.

Moreover, none of that is relevant to charge about the tenure decision process. The process of awarding tenure differs from institution to institution. Some processes are fairly transparent, others are not. Some processes are faculty led and faculty driven, some are not. Typically, faculty who are denied tenure take it very personally and look for explanations that lie beyond their level of achievement and promise for future achievement. The cases that become public are the ones where the "wheel" publicly squeaks. I can point to cases where it appears that a professor was denied tenure because she was viewed negatively by conservatives (Nikole Hannah-Jones comes to mind) as well as those who are viewed negatively by liberals (James Eastman whose tenure was just recently revoked) comes to mind.

---

 

[Bomb#20]

You are complaining about "conservative" speakers

Liberal ones get excluded by progressive orthodoxy enforcing mobs too; but liberals are so vanishingly rare in the current American ideasphere that there's no signal to noise ratio to speak of.

and not the generalized day in and day out activities at a campus?

Hey, students bullied into silence by the generalized day in and day out activities at a campus isn't something it's clear how to measure. Disinvitations are visible.

Also you have nothing to justify the "Same people who discriminate against conservatives in tenure decisions..."? That was kind of the broad and more judgmental portion of your post... most presumptive as well. Care to back that up, or are you just upset that sometimes controversial people who are selling a less than intellectual argument are not speaking at campuses...

Oh, right, like students are also protesting the tsunami of progressive speakers selling a less than intellectual argument.

and you hoped we wouldn't notice the jibe expecting us to accept that conservatives are discriminated in tenure decisions on campuses?

Where the bejesus do you see me expecting you to accept it? Just because it's painfully obvious reality doesn't mean you aren't willfully blind to it. What I expect is that you'll wallow in confirmation bias.

This isn't to say internal politics aren't involved in tenure decisions, but actual politics?

John Hasnas, writing in the WSJ:

"In the more than 20 years that I have been a professor at Georgetown University, I have been involved in many faculty searches. Every one begins with a strong exhortation from the administration to recruit more women and minority professors. We are explicitly reminded that every search is a diversity search. Administrators require submission of a plan to vigorously recruit applications from women and minority candidates.

Before we even begin our selection process, we must receive approval from the provost that our outreach efforts have been vigorous enough. The deans and deputy deans of each school reinforce the message that no expense should be spared to increase the genetic diversity of our faculty.

Yet, in my experience, no search committee has ever been instructed to increase political or ideological diversity. On the contrary, I have been involved in searches in which the chairman of the selection committee stated that no libertarian candidates would be considered. Or the description of the position was changed when the best résumés appeared to be coming from applicants with right-of-center viewpoints. Or in which candidates were dismissed because of their association with conservative or libertarian institutions."​

 

[Bomb#20]

I think we are using different meanings of "easy" and "hard".

It's to be expected that even ideas which are hard to come up with will come up more often when more people are able to collaborate on them. How does a graph of worldwide patents per capita look?

I haven't seen one; but the American graph shows a long-term rise in patents per capita. (Obviously a rise a lot less dramatic than the raw numbers I posted.) I'm confident that a world-wide graph would show the same trend more strongly than the American-only numbers simply because a lot more of the world has joined the invent-and-patent game. More people per capita are in a position to invent and patent.

Arguably "easy" and "hard" should be measured in patents per engineer rather than patents per person; if we measured it that way maybe you'd be right that it's getting harder. But I think that would be neglecting the part of "easy" and "hard" that concerns how easy or hard it is to get the education it takes to get into the game. It's just an awful lot easier to become an engineer now than it was in 1883, and that counts toward how easy it is to invent stuff.

(And of course technology is merely the most easily measurable kind of new thought. I'm pretty sure it's easier to become a scientist or novelist or composer now too.)

For an individual to come up with something completely new, requires first that they learn what everyone else has come up with, so that they aren't re-inventing something that is already out there.

How do you figure? So what if you reinvent something that's already out there? So what if 90% of the stuff you invent turns out to be things you think are new but aren't? Not bothering to learn what everyone else came up with doesn't stop the remaining 10% from being completely new.

That educational burden alone is non-trivial (and is yet another vital service provided by universities).

Agreed; but keeping people from reinventing isn't what makes it vital. It's vital because seeing further than others takes standing on the shoulders of giants. Completely new thoughts invariably depend on a tower of preexisting thoughts.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This isn't to say internal politics aren't involved in tenure decisions, but actual politics?

John Hasnas, writing in the WSJ:

"In the more than 20 years that I have been a professor at Georgetown University, I have been involved in many faculty searches. Every one begins with a strong exhortation from the administration to recruit more women and minority professors. We are explicitly reminded that every search is a diversity search. Administrators require submission of a plan to vigorously recruit applications from women and minority candidates.​

​

Before we even begin our selection process, we must receive approval from the provost that our outreach efforts have been vigorous enough. The deans and deputy deans of each school reinforce the message that no expense should be spared to increase the genetic diversity of our faculty.​

​

Yet, in my experience, no search committee has ever been instructed to increase political or ideological diversity. On the contrary, I have been involved in searches in which the chairman of the selection committee stated that no libertarian candidates would be considered. Or the description of the position was changed when the best résumés appeared to be coming from applicants with right-of-center viewpoints. Or in which candidates were dismissed because of their association with conservative or libertarian institutions."​

So, one person at one college. At least it is evidence supporting your claim, but it seems a bit short on being able to use it to broad brush the entire collegiate system in our country.

 

[Politesse]

So, one person at one college. At least it is evidence supporting your claim, but it seems a bit short on being able to use it to broad brush the entire collegiate system in our country.

And a private university at that. A school that is, in fact, much more famous for buying and selling African slaves two centuries ago than for any efforts at encouraging diversity in the present.

 

[laughing dog]

This isn't to say internal politics aren't involved in tenure decisions, but actual politics?

John Hasnas, writing in the WSJ:

"In the more than 20 years that I have been a professor at Georgetown University, I have been involved in many faculty searches. Every one begins with a strong exhortation from the administration to recruit more women and minority professors. We are explicitly reminded that every search is a diversity search. Administrators require submission of a plan to vigorously recruit applications from women and minority candidates.​

​

Before we even begin our selection process, we must receive approval from the provost that our outreach efforts have been vigorous enough. The deans and deputy deans of each school reinforce the message that no expense should be spared to increase the genetic diversity of our faculty.​

​

Yet, in my experience, no search committee has ever been instructed to increase political or ideological diversity. On the contrary, I have been involved in searches in which the chairman of the selection committee stated that no libertarian candidates would be considered. Or the description of the position was changed when the best résumés appeared to be coming from applicants with right-of-center viewpoints. Or in which candidates were dismissed because of their association with conservative or libertarian institutions."​

So, one person at one college. At least it is evidence supporting your claim, but it seems a bit short on being able to use it to broad brush the entire collegiate system in our country.

John Hasnas is a in a business school. I find his interpretation of events suspect because in my experience, business school faculty are generally not adverse to pro-business or pro-capitalist ideologies.