By Professor Doom
--note carefully that
last line. The university had to add
“Indian” at the end, because anyone born in America is technically a native, and
they didn’t want to risk a white person being hired this way.
The above ad appeared
in October of 2015. Yes, I know that makes it somewhat old news, but…I’m
confused. When Trump makes a gaffe that’s even vaguely racist, it’s all over
the news, and I can’t even begin to count the number of public figures that
have seen their careers end due to an offhand comment leading to months of
wailing in the media.
But this ad was no
offhand comment, it was typed up professionally, and posted. You don’t just
slap up a job ad in higher education willy-nilly, you have to go through a
process of showing need, and have a discussion with admin over what you’re
looking for. The HR department typed it up and posted it, being sure to satisfy
the needs of the department, and the needs of administration. The last line of
the ad comes from admin.
Here’s something
else from admin:
Equal Employment Opportunity
The University of Louisville is an
Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity, Americans with Disabilities Employer,
committed to community engagement and diversity, and in that spirit, seeks
applications from a broad variety of candidates.
The above was directly
before the paragraph specifying what types of minorities are acceptable for the
physicist position. HR typed up that, too, since admin requires that policy
regarding “equal opportunity” be followed. Well, they must say as much, but
admin has made it clear, many times, that they’ll ignore any policy that gets
in their way.
Admin:
“There’s no such thing as mathematical game theory, and, frankly, I’m a little
angry you would try to trick me.”
Me: “…”
--not close
to the stupidest thing I’ve been told by admin at a community college, but I
want to emphasize the intimidation factor here. You must agree to admin…or
else.
In this blog I’ve
made many claims about how corrupt and/or incompetent administration in higher
education is. I know these claims
sound outlandish, which is why I try so hard to document when I see elsewhere,
the things I’ve seen with my own eyes.
Me: “So,
you’re telling me that we’ve documented at least 1/3 of the courses on this
campus require literally nothing from our students, no papers, no tests, no
nothing…they need not show up even one time, and still get an A for the
course?”
Registrar:
“Yes.”
So, I’m telling
you that community colleges can operate completely fraudulently, and there will
be no repercussions…and I follow up with studies and books that explicitly
discuss the open criminality
of community colleges.
Me: “I, and
a number of my colleagues, have noticed that many students, slightly less than
half, disappear after ‘check day’ when they receive their Pell Grant checks.
Can we please do something about the obvious fraudsters? I note in the contact
information for my students that a number of them are, supposedly, commuting
over 500 miles to come to this school, which literally has nothing not offered
at every other community college.”
Admin: “We
need those students, and they are entitled to come here.”
--Pell Runners represent a large number of “students” in
community college because
administration doesn’t care about the fraud, and only wants “growth.”
I’ve written of
the Pell Grant fraud, and how administration literally doesn’t care about all
the fraudulent students on campus, and, of course, documented that this fraud
represents a large
percentage of the “students” in higher education today. These
students register in multiple colleges, picking up the checks and moving on,
while admin deliberately turns a blind eye. Admin are paid based on the size of
the institution, you see, not on legitimacy of the students or quality of the
education.
Faculty:
“The person who was selected for the position was not interviewed by the hiring
committee, and, in fact, she is not qualified.”
Admin: “We
need more female representation in the math department.”
--the new
hire in question was also the Dean’s girlfriend. A fistfight nearly broke out
over this, because it was so blatant, not that faculty could do anything about
it.
I understand that
this sort of news is not “sexy,” but I’ve also spoken of the virulent racism
and sexism on campus today, especially when it comes to hiring. And, once
again, I’ve produced very clear documentation, this time in that job ad.
I repeat the key
line:
“…position that will be
filled by an African American,
a Hispanic American, or a Native American Indian.”
Why isn’t the job
posting sexy enough to merit an uproar in the media? It’s very clear racism,
it’s very clearly in violation of the no-discrimination equal opportunity policy
the university helpfully provided directly above the job posting. I promise
you, no administrator will lose her job over this gross error.
I’ve waited
patiently for weeks for…something. Why isn’t this all over the news? Heck, the
“water
buffalo incident” merits a page on Wikipedia, even though the “slur”
is hardly racist.
But this open
violation of policy, of common sense, of fairness, merits…almost nothing. Only
a specialized site, Inside
Higher Education, covers the story in much detail.
To be fair,
someone with an ounce of common sense did point out, after the ad was posted,
how ridiculously insulting it was. The excuse from admin, is, of course, pure
lies:
The ad,
posted in mid-October, was taken down after the department received a complaint
that the preferences didn’t include applicants with disabilities, said C.S.
Jayanthi, chair of physics and astronomy. She said she forwarded the complaint
to administrators, and the ad was promptly removed.
Never in my 25+
years of higher education has an administrator requested we hire a disabled faculty member…but time and
time and time again, I’ve been told how we “need” to hire a specific gender, or
a specific minority, “or else.”
The real nature of
the error is acknowledged, sort of, by admin elsewhere:
“I’ve never
seen that before and it strikes me as inappropriate,” said Benjamin Reese Jr.,
vice president and chief diversity officer at Duke University
The gentle reader
needs to understand campuses are bloated with 6-figure paid administrators,
such as the above “vice president and chief diversity officer,” and the
entirety of their jobs is to keep the racism private. The University of
Louisville, of course, has their own Office of
Diversity (you can see pictures of their two top
female minority commissars administrators, including
a Vice Provost for Diversity and International Affairs at the institution which
posted the vile ad)…why aren’t they screaming loudly about the bias here? Why
do we even have these overpaid diversity hires if not to stop this sort of
thing?
Oh what a tangled
web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Remember the above quote saying the issue was the ad didn’t include
people with disabilities? It doesn’t take long for admin to contradict herself:
Jayanthi
said she wondered how the department was supposed to attract minority
candidates without explicitly saying so in the job ad.
So much for it being about
disabilities. The chair, incidentally, is female, in a field, physics, with
mostly male degree holders (by a wide margin). Is it unfair to guess that her
gender was part of her rise to admin? I’ve been on campuses where most every
administrative position was female…even in my field, math, which has about as
many female Ph.D.s as physics does, which is to say, not many. Strange
coincidence, really…I don’t mean to cast aspersions on her, but in light of
that ad, someone with an open mind has to at least consider such things.
The gentle reader
needs to understand this kind of bigoted hiring has been going on for quite some
time. I know, this is just another claim by me, a random blogger…but the only
way that ad could have gotten posted is if everyone had been told specifically
what kind of skin color was going to be hired (and, of course, what kind was
not).
Usually, the
bigoted hiring is done with a wink and a nod, and it’s not so open. A few comments on
the article show I’m hardly
alone in knowing this:
I don't agree with hiring for race; but I will say, at least the Louisville administrators are being honest about their intentions.
I have to agree
with the above sentiment; administration lies so often that the truth, in
writing, from admin is pretty refreshing.
There are
quite a few universities who do exactly what the University of Louisville did
here, with the only difference being that they are not so transparent and
obvious about excluding some groups from consideration. My own university
recently instituted an initiative in which departments were told that they may
hire members of only one racial group for a series of positions made available
by the upper administration. We were told that no candidates who were outside
of this specific racial group--including candidates from other diversity
groups--would be considered…
Consider how
blatantly illegal the “initiative” referenced above is…and there’s not the
slightest chance any lawsuit will come of it. And, I’m telling you, our
institutions of higher education have been hiring like this, more or less
surreptitiously, for many years.
Of all the open
frauds going on in higher education right now, this one might be of the least
concern to our kids suffering under the student loan scam, but it’s possibly
the most relevant: the forcible insertion of identity politics into hiring
means our kids are indebting themselves, not to learn from people who are
legitimately interested in helping others, but are instead…simply the right
gender or skin color. Since education is clearly not even a remote concern, what
are the odds that our kids will get an education worthy of what they’re paying
for in this system?
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