Op-Ed: “D.E.I. Is Not Working on College Campuses. We Need a New Approach.”
“Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment, impeding students’ social development.”
Yes. Yes, we do.
. . . “many D.E.I. training programs actually subvert their institutions’ educational missions.
Here’s why. A major purpose of higher education is to teach students the skill of critical inquiry, which the philosopher and educator John Dewey described as “the active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it.” Conscientious faculty members teaching about race and gender require their students to critically consider differing views of the status and history of people of color, women and L.G.B.T.Q.+ people.
Teaching critical thinking about any topic is challenging and humbling work.
While issues of diversity, equity and inclusion are sometimes addressed in rigorous classroom courses, university-based D.E.I. programs tend to come in two basic forms: online or off-the-shelf trainings that are more suitable for airline safety briefings than exploring the complexities of interracial relations, and ideological workshops that inculcate theories of social justice as if there were no plausible alternatives.. . . . Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment, impeding students’ social development. An excessive focus on identity can be just as harmful as the pretense that identity doesn’t matter. Overall, these programs may undermine the very groups they seek to aid by instilling a victim mind-set and by pitting students against one another.
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Comments
So it took the NYT ten years to discover that “DEI is racism.”
And they STILL haven’t got it entirely right.
It’s amazing the Times ran this op ed.
I have a modest proposal for a new approach. Stop the set-asides, the coddling, the special personnel, the safe spaces. Let the various minority students join in with the students of Irish, Scottish, Italian, Slavic, and others and just be students.
How about a focus on judging people based on their accomplishments (or content of their character) rather than viewing people based on their demographics or their sexual predilections?
That has been suggested. The DEI mafia, however, were not persuaded that it met their needs.
this also applies to affirmaction which is dei older sister
For those behind the DEI movement, “instilling a victim mind-set by pitting students against one another” is a feature, and not a bug.