Yale Pumps Millions into Faculty Diversity Hiring Efforts
“We are making an emphatic statement about our commitment to recruiting the most distinguished scholars, who will help diversify Yale”
It’s probably safe to assume this initiative has little to do with diversity of viewpoint.
Yale Daily News reports:
Yale expands faculty diversity funding
Yale’s Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative, a University-wide effort to recruit and retain a diversity of professors, will be renewed for an additional five years with a $35 million boost to its budget.
The initiative, created in late 2015, dedicated millions of dollars to make competitive offers to tenure-track faculty members that can “enrich the excellence and diversity” of the University, according to its website. Among other causes, the fund also provides slots for roughly 10 Presidential Visiting Fellows every year. The initiative has brought over 80 professors to the University and attracted a number of doctoral students through the Dean’s Emerging Scholars program. With the additional monetary commitment, the program’s budget will grow from $50 million to a total of $85 million.
University President Peter Salovey said in his community-wide email last month that Yale expanded the initiative due to its success.
“We are making an emphatic statement about our commitment to recruiting the most distinguished scholars, who will help diversify Yale, transform their fields, create knowledge to improve the world, and inspire our students to lead and serve all sectors of society,” he wrote.
Faculty diversity has become a key issue for the University in recent years. In 2016, Salovey called the lack of minority representation among professors Yale’s “single biggest problem.” According to the Office of Institutional Research, there are roughly two male ladder faculty members in the FAS for every female — meaning that there are nearly 200 more men than women in such positions.
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Comments
No surprise. You can be confident that their criteria for hiring these new faculty members will be racist and sexist in the extreme. They will also stigmatize the people who are hired for their “diversity” as being inferior scholars who are there only to advertise their skin color — whether that is true or not.
On the “diversity” hiring committees I’ve served on, the most important criterion was “contribution to diversity,” which was later translated into English for me as meaning “not being a white male.”
Considering that this racist hiring is clearly illegal, more highly qualified white males should apply, and sue the schools for discrimination when they are rejected for their race.
Their diversity efforts are leaving better qualified people looking or jobs. It is long past time that affirmative craps is ended. Adding insult to injury is the fact that all this diversity crap is driving increases in overhead which are most paid for by white students and their families.
The only thing of quality labeled Yale would be a lock.
$85 *million*. Wow. Don’t undergrads usually whine about money that should be going toward financial aid? Dilemma! Also, given the limited pool (whether large or small, the pool is “limited”) of top-level minority faculty across the U.S., does this suggest an ivy league bidding war is in the works?
And consider the thinking underlying the following statements from the Yale Daily News article:
“The Office of the Provost’s Faculty Development & Diversity [(OPFD&D)] team has instructed search committees on how to avoid implicit bias while seeking new faculty members…”
And “The OPFD&D has also established guidelines to … helping women academics improve their negotiation skills.” Um, can’t Yale, I dunno, just GIVE THEM MORE COMP w/o them having to “negotiate?”
This para is worth unpacking a bit:
“[Yale president Peter] Salovey called the lack of minority representation among professors Yale’s ‘single biggest problem.’According to the Office of Institutional Research, there are roughly two *male* ladder faculty members in the FAS for every *female*…” So, then… exactly who ISN’T a minority?
And the final para: “Nearly two-thirds of all Yale ladder faculty identify as white…” THIS is what I mean: Does the reporter mean “are identified as white,” or is the reporter extending the malleable identity beyond, e.g., gender. What I mean is, can faculty who currently “identify as white” change their minds?
“We are making an emphatic statement about our commitment to recruiting the most distinguished scholars, who will help diversify Yale”
So which is it? Do you want the most distinguished scholars, or do you want a quota system? The simple un-PC reality is that you can’t have both.