Friday, May 04, 2018

Sebastian Cesario: "Unconscious Bias Training As A Management Tool"

This is consistent with my experience--though I've never been pushed to undergo such "training." And certainly not as punishment for making politically incorrect hiring decisions. So I'd have to add: but not so much with respect to the main thesis.
   But it's true, as everyone knows, that there is significant pressure to hire non-white-males. My own department always abides by a tie goes to a non-white-male policy. Except: in one search, many years ago, the dean ordered us to hire a woman. We were outright told not to consider dossiers from men. We were recently forced to undergo a voluntary diversity conversation. I considered refusing, and, were it to happen again, I probably would refuse. But I had bigger fish to fry at the time, and didn't want to cause any more trouble for the department than I ordinarily cause. I'm glad I went in that I got to hear us be told the following: non-white candidates are not more scarce in the candidate pool than white candidates; you just have to look harder for them. I ain't even making that up. I should add, however: I complained a lot about the cult of "diversity," both during the meeting and after it, to the two guys who ran it. They were reasonable and receptive to my concerns. Honestly, I was impressed by how reasonable they were about it. I really can't stress that enough.
   Anyway.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"non-white candidates are not more scarce in the candidate pool than white candidates; you just have to look harder for them."

It's amazing how unable to recognize straightforward reductio ad absurdum even a philosophy department can be when Diversity is on the line.

9:04 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

One of my younger colleagues had been pressing them about such things. When the guy running the session made that claim, my colleague looked over at me with this expression...I don't now how to describe it, but you'd know it if you saw it...his jaw have dropped slightly, his mouth started to form an objection, stopped, started again, his eyes showed a kind of despair... Like.. *He can't... did he just... but...*

My current, rather too extreme, pissed off attitude is: *facts do not matter at universities.* Rather: they don't matter when they are inconsistent with "progressive" politics, they don't matter when they buck some current educational fad, and they damn well don't matter when they are inconsistent with career-enhancing projects of deans and suchlike.

9:14 AM  

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