Art School With Massive Deficit Hiring 10 Profs to Teach ‘Race and Decolonization’
“We repeatedly heard from our community that the most definitive transformation we could make would be to increase the diversity of the scholarship of our faculty and thereby our pedagogy”
The social justice agenda of the left is eclipsing academics at some schools. RISD is one of the most respected art schools in the country. Why would they do this?
The College Fix reports:
Art school with $50 million COVID deficit is hiring 10 professors to teach ‘race and decolonization’
Public health “experts” tell us that combating racism (by chanting and marching side-by-side) is more important that following the daily restrictions we’ve accepted in every other part of life with COVID-19.
Is anyone really surprised, then, that an art school with a $50 million deficit “as a result of the prolonged lockdown this year” is investing new money in a massive expansion of a subject so tangential to its mission?
Artnet News reports that the Rhode Island School of Design is hiring at least 10 new faculty members “specializing in race, decolonization, and cultural representation” in less than a year.
President Rosanne Somerson told the wire service for art news that RISD, which is affiliated with Brown University, “must be proactively anti-racist in principle and practice, and make consequential, scaled changes throughout the institution.” It’s not enough to “simply combat racism where we find it.”
Applicants must apply by Nov. 20. Four openings are in “liberal arts and experimental and foundation studies,” and three each in fine arts and architecture and design. Applicants must not only “expand and seek to decolonize/challenge traditional art and design curriculum and pedagogies” if hired, but also become activists on behalf of RISD’s Center for Social Equity and Inclusion.
All this builds on RISD’s July plan to increase recruitment of nonwhite students, create an “Office of Discrimination Reporting and Title IX” and force students to take “social equity and inclusion” courts in multiple years:
“We repeatedly heard from our community that the most definitive transformation we could make would be to increase the diversity of the scholarship of our faculty and thereby our pedagogy,” said Somerson, who plans to hire academics “whose practice centers on issues of race and decoloniality in art and design, launching a fundamental transformation toward diversifying and expanding our curricula.”
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Comments
There are 3 possibilities.
1. They think that this level of commitment will translate into increased enrollment, thereby rescuing them from the deficit. This is, at best, wishful thinking.
2. They’ve been promised a huge amount of money from the Biden administration if they take show a commitment to “anti-racism.” Of course, there is no Biden administration and might not be, so this is, at best, a gamble.
3. They figure they’re screwed no matter what they do, so they need to pad the “anti-racist” part of their resumes in order to get good jobs later when the school folds.
Note how money is the underlying driver for each of these. That’s the way the left is. No matter how pure they claim their intentions are, they are always looking for a way to cash in.
Maybe a fourth: an art school may be one of the few niches whose typical graduate is less employable than a grievance major.
Grievance majors are VERY employable. Every college, every school district, every major corporation hires them by the boatload, and for very good money, too.
Is that really true? I know one runs into a few of those people, but one director of inclusion & wokeness is usually enough for quite a few normal working people.
What I remember from the Balmer School of Design.
1) Build high-rises
2) Implode them
3) Build low-rises
4) Raze them
5) Rinse
6) Repeat
There is a reason why Controlled Demolition originated just outside balmer